st daughter,
arranged a most successful drawing-room meeting for me at their home,
the River House, Chelsea, at which Mr. Arthur Balfour spoke. While he
thought effective voting probably suitable for America and Australia,
he scarcely saw the necessity for it in England. Party leaders so
seldom do like to try it on themselves, but many of them are prepared
to experiment on "the other fellow." In this State we find members of
the Assembly anxious to try effective voting on the Legislative
Council, Federal members on the State House, and vice versa. Other
speakers who supported me were Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury), Leonard
(now Lord) Courtney, Mr. Westlake, and Sir John Hall, of New Zealand.
The flourishing condition of the Proportional Representation Society in
England at present is due to the earnestness of the lastnamed
gentlemen, and its extremely able hon. secretary (Mr. John H.
Humphreys).

A few days were spent with Miss Jane Hume Clapperton, author of
"Scientific Meliorism," and we had an interesting time visiting George
Eliot's haunts and friends. Through the Warwickshire lanes--where the
high hedges and the great trees at regular intervals made it impossible
to see anything beyond, except an occasional gate, reminding me of Mrs.
Browning's--

And between the hedgerows green,
How we wandered--I and you;
With the bowery tops shut in,
And the gates that showed the view.

--we saw the homestead known as "Mrs. Poyser's Farm," as it answers so
perfectly to the description in "Adam Bede." I was taken to see Mrs.
Cash, a younger friend of George Eliot, and took tea with two most
interesting, old ladies--one 82, and the other 80--who had befriended
the famous authoress when she was poor and stood almost alone. How I
grudged the thousands of acres of beautiful agricultural land given up
to shooting and hunting! We in Australia have no idea of the extent to
which field sports enter into the rural life of England. People excused
this love of sport to me on the ground that it is as a safety valve for
the energy of idle men. Besides, said one, hunting leads, at any rate,
to an appreciation of Nature; but I thought it a queer appreciation of
Nature that would lead keen fox hunters to complain of the "stinking"
violets that throw the hounds off the scent of the fox. I saw Ascot and
Epsom, but fortunately not on a race day. A horse race I have never
seen. George Moore's realistic novel "Esther Waters" doe