g and gentlemanly
Englishman, with aristocratic connections and a dubious past; the manly
young Australian, whose loyalty, undervalued for a time, is rewarded in
the end--these are some of the items which go to the making of a class
of story already somewhat too common. The fact that Boldrewood continues
to make such subjects interesting is due largely to the pervading sense
of scrupulous truth, the evident element of personal experience, and the
general cheerfulness of tone, which are never absent from any product of
his pen, and which constitute his highest claims to rank in Australian
literature.

MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED.

To Mrs. Campbell Praed belongs the credit of being the first to attempt
to give an extended and impartial view of the social and political life
of the upper classes in Australia. While she has not ignored whatever
seemed picturesque in the external aspects of the country, her chief
concern has been with the people themselves. Some of the best of her
works--_Policy and Passion_ and _Miss Jacobsen's Chance_, for
example--might fairly be named as an answer to the somewhat common
complaint of a deficiency of dramatic suggestion in colonial life.

In a preface to the first-named novel, Mrs. Praed explains it to have
been her wish to depict 'certain phases of Australian life, in which the
main interests and dominant passions of the personages concerned are
identical with those which might readily present themselves upon a
European stage, but which directly and indirectly are influenced by
striking natural surroundings and conditions of being inseparable from
the youth of a vigorous and impulsive nation.'

The point of view here taken by the author at almost the beginning of
her literary career has been maintained in most cases throughout her
later work. The same preface might almost, in fact, serve for all her
Australian stories. They describe broadly, in an attitude of
good-natured criticism, the leading facts in the intellectual life of
the people; their proud self-reliance, tempered by an acute sense of
isolation and its disadvantages; their susceptibility to foreign
criticism and example; their frank, natural manners in social customs of
native origin, contrasted with their quaintly-rigid observance of
conventionalities which have long since been relaxed in the mother
country whence they were copied.

Mrs. Praed has turned to account more fully than any other writer the
little affectations