have been recognised.
About this time I read and appreciated Jane Austen's novels--those
exquisite miniatures, which no doubt her contemporaries identified
without much interest. Her circle was as narrow as mine--indeed,
narrower. She was the daughter of a clergyman in the country. She
represented well-to-do grownup people, and them alone. The humour of
servants, the sallies of children, the machinations of villains, the
tricks of rascals, are not on her canvas; but she differentiated among
equals with a firm hand, and with a constant ripple of amusement. The
life I led had more breadth and wider interests. The life of Miss
Austen's heroines, though delightful to read about, would have been
deadly dull to endure. So great a charm have Jane Austen's books had
for me that I have made a practice of reading them through regularly
once a year.

As we grew to love South Australia, we felt that we were in an
expanding society, still feeling the bond to the motherland, but eager
to develop a perfect society, in the land of our adoption.

CHAPTER VI.

A TRIP TO ENGLAND.

I have gone on with the story of my three first novels consecutively,
anticipating the current history of myself and South Australia. There
were three great steps taken in the development of Australia. The first
was when McArthur introduced the merino sheep; the second when
Hargreaves and others discovered gold; and the latest when cold-storage
was introduced to make perishable products available for the European
markets. The second step created a sudden revolution; but the others
were gradual, and the area of alluvial diggings in Victoria made
thousands of men without capital or machinery rush to try their
fortunes--first from the adjacent colonies, and afterwards from the
ends of the earth. Law and order were kept on the goldfields of Mount
Alexander, Bendigo, and Ballarat by means of a strong body of police,
and the high licence fees for claims paid for their services, so that
nothing like the scenes recorded of the Californian diggings could be
permitted. But for the time ordinary industries were paralysed.
Shepherds left their flocks, farmers their land, clerks their desks,
and artisans their trades. Melbourne grew apace in spite of the highest
wages known being exacted by masons and carpenters. Pastoralists
thought ruin stared them in the face till they found what a market the
goldfields offered for their surplus stock. Our South Australian
f