xists.
Its continuation at the present day is far more apparent. Kingsley's
young Australians are home-taught, and necessarily display most of the
characteristics of their British parents. But, still, they show
themselves types of a new race, which has now its hundreds of
representatives in the homes of the Australian gentry.

Of such was the young squatter who so attracted the attention of Mr.
Froude at the first station he visited in Victoria. 'He had till within
a month or two been herding cattle in Queensland, doing the work for
four years of the roughest emigrant field hand, yet had retained the
manners of the finest of fine gentlemen--tall, spare-loined, agile as a
deer, and with a face that might have belonged to Sir Lancelot.' Of
course, the genial author of _Oceana_ made no pretence of minute
observation in the account of his travels. Had he not been content to
fly through the country, viewing it mainly, as he admits, from 'softest
sofas' of 'a superlative carriage lined with blue satin,' he might have
seen not one, but many fine specimens of what Sir George Bowen has aptly
called the working aristocracy of Australia.

The little Arcadian kingdom--cheerful, self-contained, and
picturesque--of the Buckleys, the Brentwoods, and their historian,
Geoffry Hamlyn, of the Mayfords, Tom Troubridge, Mary Hawker, and the
rest, far from illustrates all the intermittent successes and hardships
which have commonly attended squatting in Australia. The toil,
loneliness, and monotony of the occupation are scarcely mentioned. The
aspect represented is almost entirely the agreeable one.

There is, it must be admitted, some ground for the charge that he has
made squatting life 'too much like a prolonged picnic.' Had Kingsley
been himself a pastoralist, a hundred minute experiences might have
obtained expression which he has avoided. In this respect the
historical value of his work is less than it might have been. But the
compensating gain in human interest more than justifies the author's
choice of treatment. He never allowed himself to forget that he was
telling a story, that he was writing the adventures of a small group of
emigrant English families, not a history of colonial settlement and its
difficulties. Nor does he ever take advantage of the fact that, with the
exception of two or three others whose works are collections of sketches
rather than novels, and whose names are now almost forgotten, he was the
first to descri