lian. There is rarely anything so pointed as the conversation
between Miss Jacobsen and her lover, Chepstowe. The former has been
wondering what the cultivated Englishman thought of a recent noisy and
rather vulgar reception tendered to a new Governor for whom he is acting
as private secretary. Chepstowe is suspected of being secretly amused at
his surroundings. But his view of them is purely rational and
matter-of-fact.

'You know, I fancy you colonists think rather too little of
yourselves, and we in England rather too much. Or I'll put it in
another way. I fancy you colonists think too much about yourselves,
and we in England think too little.'

'You said just now that you think too much.'

'Yes; it's the same thing put in a different way. We think too much
of ourselves, and for that reason too little about ourselves. You
are always thinking somebody is laughing at you; we have made up our
minds that we are the admiration of everybody. We are often very
ridiculous, and don't know it. You often think you are ridiculous
when you really are not.'

'I think we must have seemed very ridiculous the day you landed....
I know you are astonished at some of our public men.... You will
write home and say how rude and rough and vulgar some of them are.'

'If one wants to see the ridiculous, one can see it everywhere. We
have some public men at home who are rude and rough, and vulgar and
ridiculous.... One has to make allowances, of course, for training
and habits, and all that.... When our fellows are rough, there is
less excuse for them. The more one goes about the world, the less
one sees to laugh at, I think....'

English self-complacency is, of course, a growth of centuries, but
perhaps a deliberate and intelligent effort to acquire some of it in
Australia would be the best specific for that consciousness which,
colonists should not forget, is the mark of insignificance. It has been
said that Australians already have too much to say for themselves and
their country. The assertion is only applicable to a small boisterous
class who have never seen anything beyond their own shores.

A much commoner element of Antipodean life, one which some of Mrs.
Praed's characters notably illustrate, is the desire for wider
experience and culture produced among educated people by their constant
use of British and European literature. James Ferguson, the yo