has less chance of success in the Colonies than in London, Manchester, and Glasgow. The newspapers are well sustained in tone. Public sentiment would

put down a literature allowed in Britain, and welcomed in America.

Tom was a good lad at home. He got on well with father, was doated on by mother, was a dear fellow with sisters, and a jolly companion to brothers. There was a famous household of them all, and a merry one. Nothing like a large family for the interests of children. Favourites cannot be had, and spoiled ones are unknown. Such a well regulated establishment is a good school of life, as well as a nursery of virtue. Its members are likely to battle better with the world, put up with inconveniences and annoyances, exhibit more self-denial, and get along easier with their fellow-men.

The temperance of Colonial youth is well known, and Tom was no exception to the rule. However common the plague of drink may be in Australia and Tasmania, the infirmity is witnessed in those trained amidst the supposed superior moral and intellectual advantages of Great Britain and Ireland, and not with those born under the Southern Cross.

The only charge substantiated against some Currency lads has been that of complicity with the Bushranger. But this, though confined to New South Wales, has, perhaps, arisen less from sympathy with crime than from a feeling of liking for bold deeds.

English gentlemen once openly expressed their admiration for Buccaneers, and our fathers had a sneaking kindness for the bold Dick Turpin, as their ancestors had for Robin Hood.

Colonial lads, in spite of the origin of some of them, are seldom seen at the bar of justice. In business they have a reputation for shrewdness, but not a character for sharpness. Without any prominent organ of veneration, with no particular taste for stimulants, they have been pronounced susceptible to religious impressions, and, for a time at least, will yield to the eloquence of a revivalist. But there is a sad deficiency in the argumentative for faith, and not a few sects would suffer in their distinctiveness if the special marks were left to the defences of Colonial youth. They are too gregarious to separate, like cattle on a run, into independent camps.

One good thing can be said on their behalf. They are not given to the display of their own intellectual excellence, in contemptuous treatment of others' opinions; nor are they guilty of exhibiting their own particular wisdom in the ridicule of sacred subjects, or in coarse jokes at the credulity of others. Tom went to church himself, and listened respectfully there. But he thought his mate who went to chapel was as good as himself, and went to as proper a place.

Colonial lads are not sentimental. A certain class of gushing English ladies would pronounce them boors and bores. They have no idea of assuming romantic

attitudes, or of simulating emotions they do not feel. They are too honest for a make-believe. But they really are defective in point of sentiment, are not quick in the discernment of finer shades of sensibilities, and lack the power of more delicate sympathies. They do not realise the wild passions of excited poets, nor enter into the tender distresses of susceptible heroines. Having a country not overburdened with romantic associations, they are indisposed to be interested deeply in famous places, and not renowned for heroworship. A landscape may be admired by them, but not for those suggested forms, and colours, and thoughts which the man of refined taste has brought before him in the view. The fine arts are not in their way.

Worse than all, though such lads will think about the other sex, will fall in love, will marry, indeed, they do not indulge in those raptures usually attributed, in books, to European lovers. It is questionable if any of them call their sweetheart 'adorable charmer,' 'angelic Angelina,' or 'divine goddess.' One has been known to weep bitterly over rejected addresses. But, gene

rally, in the event of such an accident, the young gentleman would have pitied the lady rather than himself, and would certainly have sought consolation in the doctrine that there were as good fish in the sea as ever were caught.

The girl who calculates upon being treated as a fairy or a goddess, although she does not swallow

whole oysters or drink porter, had better not submit herself to the attentions of a colonial lad. But a girl who is natural and honest herself, with simple modesty, and tolerable looks, would run a great risk of being naturally, honestly, and modestly courted by the aforesaid Colonial lad. Though not stringing together many pretty speeches, and indulging in many pretty ways, he would be an ardent lover, and make a right-down home-staying, honourable, good husband.

Now Tom was in all this true to the standard. As to girls, he was fond of their society, plagued them in a pleasant manner, was thoroughly familiar, did them many a good turn, but brought no blush of shame upon the cheek of any of them. And yet he was attached to no one in particular, though his sisters knew of half-a-dozen they were sure he had been thinking of, at one time or another, and could name more than a dozen who would jump at him.

Out of his articles, twenty-two years of age, and able to keep a wife, after the moderate and sensible Colonial fashion, some wondered Tom had no sweetheart yet.

May the good Colonial way of early marriages, virtuous unions, and lots of olive branches, never give place to the modern civilisation of wild youth, illsorted mates, and heartless homes without the laughter of a child!

CHAPTER XI.

THE GALLOP ACROSS THE ISLAND.

'I SEE you have no railroads yet,' observed the captain to his friend Roberts.

'Alas! we are in such a benighted state in Tasmania as to have none at present, although sworn to have before very long. We dash through the bush on horses, as the wild Indians, roll over their rolling prairies with their snorting Mustangs. But I am free to confess privately my own degraded taste for Shank's Poney. I am of so mean and grovelling a nature as to admire the humble pace of a walk. I have, in some places, dropped down lower, and indulged in a crawl and a creep.'

'And so have I,' answered the first. In fact, I am making here the discovery of a long lost faculty, the art of walking.'

'You are not the only Indian fellow who has regained the use of his limbs by coming to Tasmania.'

'I own my recovered powers. But who can help it here? The landscape is so inviting, and the air is so inspiriting, that one is irresistibly led on for a trial; and then the climate is so mild and bracing, that the sense of fatigue is not so depressing.'

'You here forget to name the other thing, Douglas. Whether you will or no, if you want to get about this part you must walk and crawl. I would defy any