partly tempted into doing
wrong by opportunity, and kept back by circumstances from getting into
the straight track afterwards.'

The examples given in the story of the aptness of this remark are often
very touching. The poor Marston boys are indeed only half bad. Their
better natures, seconded by the influence of a good mother and sister,
are continually urging them to reformation, but for this there is no
opportunity. The decision of their fate by the turn of a coin when the
first great temptation comes is symbolical of the trifling causes to
which the ruin of so many young Bushmen in the early days of squatting
was traceable.

The personal observation strongly marked in all Boldrewood's novels has
in _Robbery under Arms_ its fullest, as well as most skilful,
expression. As a squatter, the author had seen the practices of the
cattle-thief, and learned his language. He had observed the extent to
which idleness and a love of horseflesh combined to fill the gaols of
the country, and in later years this knowledge was confirmed in the
course of his long experience as a magistrate. The judgment with which
he presents the case of the young Marstons as types of a class is
excelled only by the literary skill employed upon the character of their
chief.

But there was no need to make Dick Marston so often emphasise the
comfort of living 'on the square,' and the folly of ever doing
otherwise. The story bears a self-evident moral. Humour there is in
plenty, but the pathos of tragedy is the dominant, as it is the
appropriate, tone of the book. In no respect has greater accuracy been
attained than in the reproduction of the Australian vernacular, that odd
compound of English, Irish, Scotch, and American phrases and inflexions,
with its slender admixture of original terms. Visitors to Australia have
praised the purity of the English spoken there by the middle classes.
Mr. Froude, as late as 1885, found that 'no provincialism had yet
developed itself,' but he wrote chiefly of what he had heard in the
towns. It is in the country that the colonial dialect--if speech so
largely imitative can yet be called a dialect--is most heard.

Among other interesting features in Dick Marston's narrative is the
curious half-impersonal view which the outlaws take of the efforts made
by the Government to capture them, and their strong dislike, on the
other hand, to the private persons who competed with the police for the
large rewards offered. Th