h abode in later years, they often
looked back with regret to the peerless climate, the calm days, the
restful evenings spent so far beyond the southern main at Langa-willi.'

At least one of them must often have recalled those days as being among
the happiest of a none too happy life. The main features of Kingsley's
career after he returned to England may be summarised here in a few
words. The distinct success as a novelist which he won during the first
four or five years was not maintained. His work lessened in interest as
he lost the _verve_ of youth, increased his leaning towards romance, and
became more conventional in his methods.

He essayed journalism for a time, first as editor of the Edinburgh
_Daily Review_, and later as a correspondent of the same journal at the
Franco-German War. As an editor he was a failure, through being without
the necessary technical training, and it does not appear that he had
much opportunity to distinguish himself as a war correspondent. The
writing of fiction was his proper work, and his success at it seemed
always to be in proportion to the amount of personal experience which he
employed to support the superstructure of his somewhat reckless fancy.
Those of Kingsley's friends who contribute to the brief memoir of his
life bear unanimous testimony to the personal brightness and kindness of
which he has left so worthy a memorial in his first novels.

It is characteristic of Kingsley that he never wrote an ungenerous word
of the country which sent him away empty-handed from the store of its
riches. Not even a suggestion of the fruitless toil and the
disillusionment which he shared with scores of other amateur diggers
during the first two years of his colonial life finds expression in any
of his novels. His choice of incident and adventure in _Geoffry Hamlyn_
seems to imply a deliberate ignoring of what was by far the most
striking development of Antipodean life in the decade of 1850-60.

The gold-fields were then in a sense an epitome of the world, the centre
at which all men's thoughts converged, an ever-changing spectacle, a
daily source of novelty and suggestion. The life of the squatters was
primitive, inferior in variety, and marked only by a rapid accumulation
of wealth, which was in itself but a part of the general prosperity
created by the discovery of gold. If Kingsley wished to repress memories
which it would have been against his cheerful nature to perpetuate, he
succee