, Kingsley has been freely
credited with a certain ever-pleasing vivacity and gallantry of style
far too rare in literature to be overlooked. The warmest of his admirers
in his own country have even attempted to raise him to a position above
that of his more celebrated brother.

The task of comparing Kingsley the poet, preacher, and reformer, with
Kingsley the laughing, genial teller of stories who never cherished a
hobby in his life, would seem to be as superfluous on general grounds as
it is premature in respect of the only possible question as to which of
them is likely to be best remembered a generation or two hence. Only in
one particular does it seem quite safe to predict--namely, that whatever
may be the future standing of one who is said to have never penned a
story without a didactic purpose of some kind, Henry Kingsley is certain
of a permanent place in the literature of the young country where he
encountered both the best and the worst experiences of his life.

The English estimate of his novels--mainly a technical one--having been
recorded, it seems to the present writer that something of interest
might be said of them from, as far as possible, the Australian point of
view, the standpoint of the reader who knows the country of Sam Buckley
and Alice Brentwood, and has lived some of their life. Two out of the
three best novels are largely Australian in matter, and the reasons for
their enduring popularity in the colonies are among the best grounds of
the favour in which the author is held by the average English reader, to
leave out of reckoning for the moment the literary expert. _Geoffry
Hamlyn_ and _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ have obvious faults, but in
most respects they are the highest, because the least artificial,
expression of Kingsley's powers. A consideration of some of their more
noticeable qualities will perhaps afford the clearest answer to the
question which opens this essay.

Henry Kingsley was one of the many impecunious young Englishmen of
education and adventurous spirit who sought fortune on the gold-fields
of Australia between 1851 and 1860, and were rewarded in some cases with
ready wealth, but in far more with bitter disappointment. Leaving Oxford
without a degree in the company of two fellow-students, he hurried off
to the Victorian gold-fields, which were then in the early sensational
period of their development, and attracting people from all parts of the
world. It was the time whe