ness and opposition on the part of a rebellious son and
step-daughter. While in his relations with his womenkind--the tractable
section of them--there is nothing of that quaint American delicacy and
reserve noted by Howells, there is in its stead an absorbing tenderness
which is irresistible.

The superiority of Silas Lapham as a realistic portrait is not difficult
to affirm; still, it is a fact complimentary to Tasma that the
characters thus far approximate. Uncle Piper is under all the
disadvantage that a figure in fiction suffers in being described largely
in plain statement by the author instead of being gradually revealed in
piquant dialogue.

Readers of _Silas Lapham_ will remember the rapid series of witty
touches with which the burly Bostonian is sketched as he sits in the
office of his warehouse, surrounded by samples of the mineral paint that
he is so pathetically proud of, striving to maintain a dignified
indifference as he answers the rather flippant curiosity of the local
press interviewer. Uncle Piper, on the other hand, is introduced, as
all of Tasma's characters are, in sundry solid-looking pages of direct
narrative. It is true that their humour and epigram make bright reading,
but they are necessarily without the power of pithy dialogue to create a
vivid impression of character.

Whether Uncle Piper is a type of Australian plutocracy need hardly be
discussed. Of plebeian tradesmen grown wealthy every community has its
proportion. It may, however, be said that the owners of luxurious villas
in the suburbs of Melbourne have individually a good deal more grammar
and less generosity than he who was described by one of his fashionable
English guests as possessing 'the home of a West-End magnate and the
intonation of a groom.' The author herself would probably disclaim any
intention to represent a type. She is one of those writers who doubt the
existence of types in the ordinary meaning of the term, and she
certainly makes no conscious attempt to delineate them.

A passage in her third novel, _The Penance of Portia James_, gives her
views on this subject, and incidentally upon Australian character. A
description is furnished of a breakfast-party in the London home of an
Australian who has made his fortune in a silver-mine, and from being a
_habitue_ of colonial racecourses has lately developed into a patron of
art and a purchaser of dubious 'old masters' at exorbitant prices.

To hold up the assemble