s of law-making.
The tension of their daily lives, severer than that of the majority of
press writers in Great Britain, leaves them little or no leisure for
literary work of the higher kind, and generally the prospect of being
compelled to send whatever they might write to the other end of the
world for the chance of publication discourages effort. It may safely be
said that there are young men on the editorial and reporting staffs of a
dozen of the principal journals who possess ability that would secure
them distinction in the wider fields of England or America. To their
skill and spirited rivalry is due the universally high quality of the
Antipodean press. Mr. David Christie Murray, writing after considerable
experience of the colonies, and as one who had been an English
journalist, said that on the whole he was 'compelled to think it by far
and away the best in the world.' The remark is without exaggeration so
far as it applies to the large weekly journals.

The extent of the favour shown by Australian readers to the works of
their own novelists is, as a rule, exactly proportioned to that which
their merits have previously won in England. Booksellers and their
London agents, who of course treat all literature from a purely
commercial standpoint, are at all events unanimous in discrediting the
existence in recent years of any prejudice against colonial fiction of
the better class. It is now very seldom sent out in two or three volume
form, they say, but neither are the most popular English novels, except
occasionally to subscription libraries. For representative Australian
work, then, there is a fair field but no favour. It is as though the
function and existence of the authors apart from the rank and file of
English letters were not recognised. There is an exception to this rule
in the poet Gordon, as a portion of his writings, the Bush _Ballads and
Galloping Rhymes_, irresistibly commemorate the national love of
horseflesh and outdoor life. Every Australian now knows that _For the
Term of his Natural Life_ is a great novel of its class; but as a
leading Victorian journalist (Mr. James Smith) once pointed out in an
article in the _Melbourne Review_, Clarke's real merit was for years
undervalued, because he was known to be 'only a colonial writer.'
Thousands of English, European and American readers had admired the
novel before they thought of inquiring who the writer was or whence he
came. It is true that the story