aps, indeed, though this implies a somewhat wild flight of
imagination, he might altogether escape the fatal sense of compulsion
towards printers'-ink, under which the traveller of a few weeks' or
months' experience commonly labours when once he has extricated himself
from the blandishments of Toorak or Darling Point.

It is true that Australia has received many a compliment from casual
writers, but to Australians themselves it is always a question whether
these kindnesses are not outbalanced by the inaccuracies which surround
them. For it may as well be said at once that the younger colonists do
not relish being denied all native individuality, and depicted with a
complaisant condescension as mere imitators of English life. It is well
to be a Briton, they say, but better to be an Australian. And who shall
say that their self-satisfaction is not healthy and pardonable?

By contrast with the judgments of persons to whom candour concerning the
colonies seems to be a stern duty, Henry Kingsley's pictures of the
pioneer life of Australia fifty years ago, and his liberal estimate
(since largely realised) of the future of the country, find more
enduring appreciation than would, perhaps, be accorded such writing in
ordinary circumstances.

The good feeling that shines on every page of _Geoffry Hamlyn_ would
earn gratitude from Australian readers were the story not in itself
spirited and absorbing. If from the personal experiences with which this
first novel is crowded Kingsley excluded everything that might be
unfavourable to the reputation of Australia and its people, he at least
told nothing that was untrue. His record of the country is a generous
one, but there is no flattery--at least, none of the grosser sort.

It is one of his supreme qualities, too, that while delighting to
preserve unmodified the British spirit and traditions in his emigrant
colonists, he surrounds their offspring with a subtle distinction. Some
of the manly strength and courtly serenity, the truth, honour, and
delicacy of the ideal Englishman and Englishwoman they reproduce; and
then there is added a something caught from the warm air and the broader
expanses of the South--a new impulse, a deeper tinge in the blood, a
greater trust in human nature.

As befitting the early period of which the novelist wrote, this
difference is not strongly marked, and is more readily recognisable in
the light of colonial experience than without it; but it clearly e