must fill every wholesome-hearted reader with disgust. He is required to write without regard to the power and prejudices of a frequently too sensitive Press; and, in short, to tell the truth without the least fear of the consequences. This is what I shall endeavour to do.

More than eighty-four years have elapsed since Arthur Phillip first landed, and initiated civilization on these shores. The marvellous progress that the colony has made since then is known, I presume, to almost every member of the community-that is to say, to almost every one of us who can read, write, and think. Where vast belts of forest used to stand, cities have started up almost as rapidly as Troy did to the music of Apollo; where there was once nothing for the eye to rest upon but brown, sunbaked waste, the iron horse now rushes between noble townships, and great breadths of cultivated country; and where the silence in the old days was only broken by the occasional footfall of the savage, or the monotonous cry of the curlew, the ridges and gullies at the present date resound with the songs of the miner, the blows of the pick, and the harsh, grating noises of the crushing-machine. There is little need, however, to go into all this. I only refer to the changes that have taken place just to remind the reader of the wonderful strides New South Wales has made in one direction, before proceeding to speak of her unique backwardness in another.

For while all this social and commercial progress has been going on-while every possible effort has been made by the colony for the attainment of physical prosperity and wealthalmost next to nothing has been done with regard to its intellectual advance; or, in other words, towards the creation and fostering of a native literature. Not that we have never had amongst us men with that aboriginal and plenary power which constitutes the authentic insignia-so to speak of genius: on the contrary, I think I could point to several who, if they had been placed in happier worldly circumstances, and under a different face of heaven, would have secured a permanent and honorable footing in the world of letters. Were Mr. Barton in my place, he would at this point quote poor Dan Deniehy as an

example; but I shall do nothing of the sort. For, in face of the enthusiastic appraisement in Literature in New South Wales, and notwithstanding the eulogiums of Messrs. Stenhouse, Dalley, and others, I cannot help coming to the conclusion that Deniehy's mind was essentially mimetic-that, in fact, he was nothing more than a brilliant scholar with a marvellous but sometimes mischievous memory, with a keen, bright critical faculty, with a prose style which, though sometimes clear and effective, was too often marred by affectation, and imitations of De Quincey at his worst, but without an iota of what men all over the civilized world recognise as originality. In fact, if I may be allowed to carry on this parenthetical paragraph a little further, Deniehy seems to me to have been right when he set Charles Harpur above himself. In the fine strong spirit that so prematurely flickered away into the dark down there at Euroma-notwithstanding its courage, its capacity for endurance, and its patience under the heaviest trials -we had a much nearer approach to the creative faculty. Uncouth, unlettered, crabbed in style as he was, Charles Harpur, nevertheless, must be accerdited with having stood up on his own feet, and uttered his message without any assistance from men or books. Even the author of Literature in New South Wales admits that he caught his inspiration from no other sources than the wild scenery and rude society in which he was placed; but Mr. Barton, following the track of others, goes on to say that he (Harpur) was "unmusical." He was nothing of the kind. Those who have criticised him never seem to have taken into consideration his life and physical surroundings; and hence such hasty and incorrect assumptions. Harpur was a son of the forests—a man of the back-woods-a dweller in unquiet and uncouth country; and his songs are accordingly saturated with the strange, fitful music of waste, broken up places. Here was a singer whose genius was ripened so to speak-by the sun and winds of outside wildernesses: mountains were his sponsors; and from them he received his lyrical education. As Tennyson's elder songs are filled with the mournful, monotonous harmony sweeping across the Lincolnshire fens, so Harpur's most characteristic, and most maligned, lyrics have, incorporated with them, the full, strong, lawless music

of the Australian hills. And because this music-native to rugged places where cliff and gorge, and tree conspire to break it into fragments-has a rhythm of its own altogether unlike that which pulsates through the sustained winds of the open lowlands

-a rhythm restless and broken, but, for all that, melodious— these songs of my countryman have fallen under the ban. Assuredly, there are critics and critics.

However to return to the cardinal subject in hand: the position of men of letters in New South Wales. As I have already stated, while we have had, and have still, men amongst us with sufficient native power to become the fathers of a striking antipodean literature, there has been little, if anything, achieved towards its creation. To the uninitiated reader, our position will, as a matter of course, appear paradoxical, Why, he may ask, is this the case? In a new country possessing a flora and fauna not to be found in any other part of the world—in the midst of a virgin society whose inner history has yet to be mirrored in prose and verse-set face to face with strange colouring and novel forms of life, how is it that these spirits armed with the requisite faculties have done nothing? Is it because they have been, and are still, swallowed up in the commercial vortex; or is it that they they are indolent dreamers of the Coleridge stamp? To all these possible inquiries, I reply with an emphatic No! The reason that genius has never proved its presence here may be set down in half-a-dozen words. Genius has never had the chance. With a view to make the foregoing clear, I will now proceed to sketch the austere situation occupied till this day by the colonial literati. With one or two exceptions, the whole of them are poor; and the most of them have no means of livelihood other than the pen. It is with these last that I intend to deal; because they form that specific section of the New South Wales lettered classes which drew from Mr. Barton the best and most pertinent of his passages, and which has embodied the only noticeable writers the colony has yet produced. What then is the history of these people these men acknowledged to be "clever," and assuredly in straitened circumstances? Simply this. Manyindeed the most of them, enter the field while mere youths, full

of enthusiasm, elated with consciousness that in the unique life and scenery around them they can find ample material for the exercise of their respective gifts; but the end invariably is disappointment and sorrow. They very soon come to realise that Australia is a new country; that society here is still in an unsettled, chaotic state; that the large bulk of the population have yet to get their money before they can enjoy leisure; that the wealthy classes the geebung aristocracy, as they are called-are formed for the most part of illiterate people, who have risen from the ranks; and, in short, that there is not the ghost of a chance for a writer attempting to get his living by offering to the public work not lying within the domains of journalism. So it comes to pass that those who happen to be lucky enough, and who possess the necessary aptitude, join the Press, and in due time forget their early aspirations and become plodding, satisfied newspaper hacks. The men who are not so fortunate-God help them!

After glancing at the foregoing, the reader will not wonder to hear that, although attempt after attempt has been made to establish one, we have no literary magazine or other journal of the kind in the colony; nor is it at all likely that we shall have such a thing for many years to come. Consequently, colonial men of letters are without a local outlet for their higher conceptions-notwithstanding the fact that many of them would be willing enough to present their work to the public without regard to monetary advantages. In implying, however, that they are utterly without a local medium, I am perhaps stepping beyond the bounds of the exact truth: it being only fair to state that one or two of the metropolitan newspapers have, from time to time, gone out of their way to make room for æsthetical papers and other articles coming within the province of belles-lettres. But this has proceeded from sheer courtesy on the part of the proprietors the literary man being invariably looked upon as the person obliged. And, taking everything into consideration, I do not see my way to find fault with the view adopted. It is all very well for Mr. Barton and others to complain that the more influential newspapers of New South Wales will not pay for contributions when they are of the magazine stamp ; but it strikes

me that, in view of the state of society which I have just described, it would be a very singular thing if they did. Apart from this, it hardly appears fair to blame a journal professing to be merely a newspaper, and having for its constituents commercial men-and commercial men only-for not sacrificing its space and capital for articles that the large body of the public would never take the trouble to glance at.

From what has been set down in this somewhat hurriedlywritten paper, people living beyond the colony may guess pretty accurately the experience of its literati, and the unenviable standing which they hold. The question will doubtless occur— who are to be held responsible for such a melancholy state of things? Not the unsettled, roving community who, as hereinbefore stated, have to make their money before they can rest and read. Not the illiterate wealthy; because it is very clear that grapes are never found growing on thistles. Not certainly not the Press; because it consists entirely of newspapers dependent upon men who discover more music in the clink of coin than in the grandest symphony Beethoven ever composed, and who rarely look inside a book. It is at other doors that the fault lies; and the day will come when those who are really culpable in the matter will be judged severely enough for their shortcomings. I have been alluding-and I say it fearlessly-to that influential class in our midst who are lettered as well as leisured; and from whom accredited colonial writers naturally expect countenance. A just recognition on the part of these men-these scholars, university professors, judges, barristers, etc.-a just recognition, and nothing more—would help the cause of Australian polite letters to a degree that they themselves appear to have no conception of. To put the matter in a clearer light, the countenance of scholars moving amongst the wealthier circles of the community would so influence the ignorant, and therefore credulous, rich that they would come to buy, for the sake of show, that which they might never read. But the people thus having it in their power to develope our intellectual resources the great grammarians who walk to and fro in society with the dignified air of the elder gods—seem wilfully to have come to the determina