e to Mend_, instead of being made a pitiable example of a confirmed
and self-accusing drunkard.

The strength of _His Natural Life_ lies not so much in the ingenuity and
dramatic quality of its plot, as in the number of striking personalities
among its leading characters. That of Rufus Dawes, curiously, is
distinct only at intervals. It represents, for the most part, a
hopeless sufferer passing through a series of punishments which become
almost monotonous in their unvaried severity.

But what could be more luminous than the portrait of Sarah Purfoy, the
clever, self-possessed adventuress with the single redeeming quality of
an invincible love for her worthless and villainous convict-husband? or
that of Frere, the swaggering, red-whiskered, coarsely good-humoured
convict-driver, glorying in his knowledge of the heights and depths of
criminal ingenuity and vice, and frankly ignorant of all else?

How naturally from such a person comes that savagely humorous
dissertation upon the treatment of prisoners! 'There is a sort of
satisfaction to me, by George! in keeping the scoundrels in order. I
like to see the fellows' eyes glint at you as you walk past 'em. Gad!
they'd tear me to pieces if they dared, some of 'em.'

Frere is a triumph of consistent literary portraiture. He is generally
understood to have been a study from life. But as the official whose
name has sometimes been associated with the character was a considerably
more humane disciplinarian than the persecutor of Rufus Dawes, it must
be assumed that Clarke aimed only at the representation of a type.

Brutes like Frere and his vindictive associates, Burgess and Troke,
there undoubtedly were on the settlements, but the average official has
probably a better representative in Major Vickers, the Commandant.
Vickers is not an unkind man, but does not trust himself to do anything
unprovided for in the 'regulations,' for which he has an abject respect.
'It is not for me to find fault with the system,' he says; 'but I have
sometimes wondered if kindness would not succeed better than the
chain-gang and the cat.' But he never gives intelligence, much less
kindness, a fair trial.

Sylvia Vickers is the only complete picture of a good woman to be found
in any of the author's stories. Taken in childhood by her parents to the
penal settlements, and separated there for years from youthful society,
familiarised with the constant aspects of crime and suffering, and
habituall