ung
squatter in _The Head Station_, represents those Australians who, though
stout believers in their own country, feel its intellectual
deficiencies--perhaps too much; who are more English than the English
themselves in their veneration for the historic associations of the
mother land; who, when they go to London, are curiously at home in
streets and among sights that have been more or less definitely outlined
in their imagination from early childhood.

While three of his English-bred companions are exchanging reminiscences
of London life, Ferguson listens with an eager interest, 'putting in a
remark every now and then which had the savour, so readily detected, of
acquaintance with the thing in question by means of books rather than
personal experience.' In Mrs. Praed's stories, as in real life, a
personal acquaintance with other countries gives the Australian a truer
appreciation of the good in his own. The man who has taken part in the
artificialities of a London season, or has been a spectator of its petty
rivalries, returns joyfully to a simpler life; the woman who is prone to
deify the smooth-spoken Englishman, learns through him to value the more
homely virtues of colonial manhood.

In the difficult task of rendering attractive the restricted life of the
squatting class, who form the country aristocracy of Australia, Mrs.
Praed has combined humour and a terse cultivated style of expression
with a dramatic sense, which has guided her past details that are merely
commonplace. The natural surroundings of a head station furnish
materials for bright little sketches immediately associated with some
romantic episode in the story; there is no vague straining to create
'atmosphere,' or anything that a judicious reader would skip.

The beautiful Honoria Longleat reclining in a hammock under the
vine-trellised verandah at Kooralbyn, stray shafts of sunlight
imparting a warm chestnut tint to her hair, a trailing withe of orange
begonia touching her shoulder, a book in her lap and a bundle of guavas
on the ground beside her; Elsie Valliant waiting for her lover on the
rocky crossing of Luya Dell, framed between two giant cedars and
outlined cameo-like against the blue sky; Gretta Reay, the proud, sturdy
little belle of Doondi, with upturned sleeves at her churn, pretending
unconcern when she is surprised by her English visitors--these are some
of the pictures in which the author commemorates much that is noteworthy
in the