country offers to its sons. As to the objection, not unfrequently urged,
that the tendency of the public school education of this country is to
withdraw the young from the industrial avocations of life, it may be
forcibly met by the fact, that it is to the New England States we look
for the best evidences of industrial, as well as intellectual,
development. The looms of Massachusetts and Connecticut are not less
busy--the inventive genius of those States is not less fertile, because
their public schools are teeming with their youth. But it is not
necessary to go to the neighbouring States to give additional force to
these remarks; for in no part of the Dominion, is there so much
industrial energy as in the Province of Ontario, where the school system
is the best. An English gentleman, who has devoted more attention than
the majority of his countrymen to the study of colonial subjects, has
well observed on this point: 'A key to one of the principal causes of
their successful progress in the development of industrial art is
probably to be found in their excellent and superior educational
system.' [Footnote: Address of Mr. Frederick Young on the Paris
Exhibition, before the Royal Colonial Institute, 1878-9.]

A review of the University system of this country, on the perfection of
which depends the higher culture of the people, shows us that the
tendency continues to be in the direction of strengthening the
denominational institutions. The Universities of Toronto and McGill are
the principal non-sectarian institutions of a higher class, which appear
to be on a popular and substantial basis. It is natural enough that each
denomination should rally around a college, which rests on a religious
basis. Parents seem in not a few cases to appreciate very highly the
moral security that the denominational system appears to afford to their
sons--a moral security which they believe to be wanting in the case of
non-sectarian institutions. Even those colleges which do not shut their