ere so complete a description of
Australian squatting life--its varying success and failure, its solid
comforts and wholesome happiness in times of prosperity. Redgrave is one
of the most elaborately drawn of all the author's characters; there is
the fullest sense of probability in every incident; the entire story is
plainly a direct transcript of life; nothing at first seems wanting. But
when the book is laid aside, the reader realises that he has scarcely
been once moved by it. He has felt a transient pity for the hero's
misfortunes, and a mild satisfaction at his modified ultimate
success--nothing more.

The main defect here appears to consist in the central motive of
Redgrave's struggles being limited to purely personal ambition. His aim
is no higher than that of a speculator in a hurry to be rich, and when
he fails, he gets little more than the sympathy which is commonly given
to the man who plays for a high stake and loses. His love for Maud
Stangrove, which might have been made a controlling and ennobling
influence, ranks only as an incident. It comes after the main impression
of his character has been given. Beyond doubt he represents a real type;
no error has been made in this respect; his failure to win higher favour
with us arises from his too close approximation to the common clay.
There is absent just that small element of the ideal with which even
the sternest of the apostles of realism in letters have found it
impracticable to dispense.

An illustration of how little Boldrewood was inclined to idealise either
his characters or their surroundings is afforded by the account of
Redgrave's first visit to the home of the Stangroves, his neighbours on
the Warroo. On the journey he passed a Bush inn of the period where
drunkenness was the normal condition of everyone, from the owner to the
stable-boy. The shanty itself, an ugly slab building roofed with
corrugated iron, 'stood as if dropped on the edge of the bare sandy
plain.' It faced the dusty track which did duty as a highroad; at the
back of the slovenly yard was the river, chiefly used as a receptacle
for rubbish and broken bottles. A half-score of gaunt, savage-looking
pigs lay in the verandah or stirred the dust and bones in the immediate
vicinity of the front-entrance. 'What, in the name of wonder,' inquired
Jack of himself as he rode away, 'can a man do who lives in such a
fragment of Hades _but_ drink?'

The home of the Stangroves, though less depr