of Australia than
of Englishwomen with equal opportunities. The impulses of the former are
under few conventional restraints; they have a greater control of their
lives: that is the only material difference. The matrimonial creed of
Gretta Reay expresses rather the exaggerated cynicism of a coquette than
a fact generally true of the class to which she belongs. The experiences
of herself and of other leading characters in these stories correctly
show that, although Australian women have an undoubted preference for
the gentlemanly product of an older civilisation, it is a preference of
sentiment in which self-interest and prudence are scarcely considered.

Even Weeta Wilson, the professional beauty so strikingly portrayed in
_The Romance of a Station_, has a soul above her own avowed commercial
view of marriage. It had been systematically planned that she should
contract an aristocratic alliance; for years she had co-operated with
her parents in elaborate preparations, half pathetic, half ludicrous;
she had been guarded and nurtured like a hothouse-plant. At last, when
her opportunity came, she relinquished her lover on finding that there
was another who had a prior right to him.

The subtle skill with which some of the nobler qualities of her women
are brought out, especially their capacity for self-sacrifice and
devotion, marks Mrs. Praed's highest point of achievement in the
portrayal of character. Her knowledge of the mental complexities of her
own sex is both deeper and better expressed than her observation of men.
In the most inconsistent, the most cynical, or the shallowest of her
women, there is a latent tenderness, a soft womanliness, which conquers
dislike. Thus, it is impossible to lack sympathy for Christina Chard, or
accept her own estimate of her selfishness, after reading the
finely-written scene in which she is found kneeling by the bedside of
her dying child, from whom she has been so cruelly separated, while her
recreant husband stands apart in awe and humiliation; or, again, in the
interview with Frederica Barnadine, when the claims of both women to
the love of Rolf Luard are discussed.

The absence of similar redeeming qualities in several of the principal
male characters leaves them almost wholly without definite claim on our
regard, and also lessens the effect of the author's frequent endeavours
to impartially contrast the unconsciously low moral standard of the
average worldly man--the standard w