e by
hundreds, and the devastation of their runs by Bush fires. They have
arrived at the period when 'there was money in the bank, claret in the
cellar, and race-horses in the paddock.' Meanwhile, the old Devonshire
life is becoming a dim memory. They have kept their promise to create a
new Drumston in the wilderness, and are well content with their homes
among the southern fern-clad hills. The history of their intercourse
approaches the character of an epic. Over his structure of realism--of
life as he saw it and lived it himself--the writer has cast a softening
glow of romance, through which are seen the beauties of ideal
friendship, of youthful love, family affection, pride of nationality,
and charity towards all mankind.

Kingsley was a lover of his fellows, and wont to declare that the
proportion of good to bad in human nature was as ten to one the world
over. This tenet of his religion he infused in some measure into all his
novels. It is this they teach if they teach anything. From it spring
their most vital qualities. The best of the stories possess that
'certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere,' which Matthew Arnold
assigned as the gift of literary genius. Their virility and right
feeling are unmistakable, and insensibly teach the practice of a silent
and kindly forbearance towards the foibles of our fellow-creatures. The
names alone of the principal characters in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ recall scene
after scene in their idyllic life to which it refreshes the mind to
return. There is Major Buckley, a hero of Waterloo, gigantic in stature,
refined, calmly courageous--a fitting leader of the settlement; Mrs.
Buckley, high-bred, stately, self-reliant, a model English matron; Tom
Troubridge, the big, merry Devonian, grown with prosperity weighty and
didactic in his speech, and thinking of turning his attention to
politics; Miss Thornton, the dignified, sweet old maid, born to spend
her life in uncomplaining service of others; Mary Hawker, tragic,
passionate, paying the slow penalty of youthful wilfulness; Captain
Brentwood, of Wellington's artillery, and his gallant son Jim, who is
sighing for a red coat and a commission; Sam and Alice, the young lovers
so nearly lost to each other 'in the year when the bushrangers came
down'; and Dr. Mulhaus, the mysterious German, with his good-humoured
roar, first heard at old Drumston, and with us to the end, who is
everybody's friend and counsellor, and beloved by all--except G