writers known to the British public--only in a slight degree
reflects the most interesting features in the present-day life of the
country. At the same time, no such considerations can detract from the
sterling merits of Rolf Boldrewood's actual services to Australian
literature. It is hardly possible to believe that the English people
still prefer to look to Australia only for stories of adventure; but if
they do--and as the first to welcome and appreciate colonial writers
they are perhaps entitled to exercise a choice--it is well that such
stories be written from complete local knowledge, and thus at least
correctly describe the broader aspects of the country.

If Boldrewood were asked to explain his silence respecting Antipodean
life of the present day, he might reply that the novel of modern manners
did not form any part of the work which he had chosen to do. At all
events, he could claim to be as much a historian as a novelist. It has
been his ambition to describe Australia chiefly as he saw it in his
youth, about forty years ago--as it was immediately before and after the
discovery of gold. That his record _per se_ is strikingly vivid and
faithful is the first general impression which his novels make upon the
reader, whether English or colonial. There is about them much of that
air of 'rightness' which Hall Caine has noted to be one of the most
enduring qualities of good fiction, whatever its literary style may be.
They are cheerful, virile, soundly moral, and take far more account of
the good than of the bad in human nature. There is no fondness of the
sensational for its own sake. The conditions of probability are observed
with a closeness which, in books dependent for their interest so largely
upon plot and incident, amounts almost to a fault.

An English historian is said to have declared that he would willingly
exchange a library full of the poets for a single good novel of the
period in which he was interested. One can readily imagine that if a
generation or two hence there should be any Australian history left
unwritten, any unsatisfied curiosity concerning the simple annals now so
familiar to us, Rolf Boldrewood's novels might be found, within their
limits, a more satisfying source of information than all the rest of
contemporary Australian literature combined, the formal chroniclers
included, as well as the poets: that is to say, the general view they
would furnish of certain features of pioneer life wou