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    is en » a <* ed to a Protestant , and Mr . Bodemal is of a wavering character . Hence Bertrandi is afraid of the Church losing her sheep , and especially the rather heavy fleece they have ready for her shears ; and he determines to see that the Church keeps her own . Accordingly , through these volumes , Bertrandi concocts and carries out the most elaborate and the vilest schemes of fraud that can be imagined . He gets Giannina and Frederick to become his accomplices—the latter his tool—and these three commit of attempt forgery , perjury , murder , slander , false-witness , lying without end , and ; what is more , discuss all these villanies among themselves in cool blood , in the most matter-of-fact manner . Mr . Bodemal , on the other hand , is irresolutely good ; his wife perfection ; her aunt , a female Uentnam

    Edwin Chadwick , talking in the polysyllabic English of Jeremy ; and . in fact , all the rest pure white , as set-offs to the other trio of intense black . Black conquers white ; Mr . Bodemal is made to believe Mrs . B . an adulteress ; Frederick marries Giannina and collars the estates , Mr . Bodemal being safely shelved in a lunatic asylum by a forged order , Mr . B . bein" as sane as you or I . Short triumph of black , and then white re-trTumphant . Bertrandi and his niece get drowned instead of hanged , and everybody ends in statu quo , plus a little matrimony , and minus Catholicism . There is only the absence of positive evangelical twaddle that prevents this work from being a supreme success in serious circles ; that causes us to treat this farrago of villanies with complacency . We believe it to be simply a mistake on Mr . Dyer ' s part . He has erroneously supposed that a good tale is compounded of violent contrasts—by br inging the pure diabolic and the pure angelic into the ring and letting them have a round together , the author being bottle-holder to the angelic , and taking care that the sponge is flung up when the diabolic is down . So far from this being the case , it is —~^! l .. j- % . ^ . ... /^ oot nr . A m / - > o < - nTrm itiva -Prtrm nf TIAVfil . As filllture TJTOSTTeSSeS .

    _ _ society refuses third robbers and heroines in book muslin with their back hair down ; it demands from a novelist that he shall penetrate deeper into human nature , and instead of giving us the self-evident angles of humanity , give us those secret and mysterious shades and varieties of idiosyncrasy and character which are the true marks of the individual . Does Mr . Dyer imagine that there have been in England in all time , in the same class of society , two such villanies perpetrated as compose his story ? Does he believe it possible to-day ? Does he think that villains talk so matter-of-fact of their infamy—that a young woman confesses to her . uncle that she is marrying a man for momentary sensual gratification and no more—that a young Englishman plots away his step-mother ' s good fame so coolly ? Or does he-not rather imagine , that when once in a couple of centuries people

    are found weak or depraved enough to perpetrate these enormities , a latent element of-manhood does yet linger to make them express by looks and signs , what human lips can seldom be got to utter ? If the Step-Son professed to be a picture of some corrupt nook in the darkest ages , it would not be , a true picture of humanity—how much less so of to-day . We therefore advise Mr . Dyer to consider ... the Step-Son as a mistake , and when next he writes a novel , to remember that a novelist should be an exponent of human nature , an interpreter of human character ; and that a great novel , like a great picture , is not produced by merely flinging together _ strong lights and shades , but by an infinitude of delicate tones and tints , distinguishable fr om one another , yet blending without violence into a homogeneous and harmonious whole .

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    COLONISTS AND TKAVELLEBS . Australia and its GoldFields : A Historical Sketch of the Present Australian C olonies , from the Earliest Times to the Present Day , with a Particular Account of the fie cent Gold-Discoveries r ^ c . --ByEdward-Hammond Hargreayes . ^ H . Ingram and Co . The Art of Travel ; or , Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries . By Francis Galtoa . John Murray . The destinies of nations have been changed by individuals more frequently and more entirely than by any progressive development of their own physical or intellectual resources . Consider the effects produced on the world by the lives of Alexander , Csesar , Charlemagne , Peter the Hermit , Columbus , Napoleon ! The list might be increased from the ranks of kings and

    conquerors , discoverers , and men of science . We may , at all events , venture to add one name to it—that of Edward Hammond Hahgbeaves , the first discoverer of gold in Australia . . Reflecting for an instant on the condition of that country a few years ago—a wool-growing , cattle-breeding colony , useful in providing food to men who found it difficult to procure a livelihood elsewhere , but utterly insignificant in its relation to the rest of the worldand comparing that condition with its present state as the richest mineral country of the world , the country which exported more than fifty millions sterling of gold in the space of three years—we think that the man whose discovery produced this vast and unparalleled change deserves to rank among the few whose lives have given new destinies to nations . In the volume before us Mr . Hargreaves has given us a faint sketch—the very faintest—of his own history . We could have wished it more explicit

    and complete , not from personal curiosity to know more about a man who has made the greatest discovery of modern times , but because there is enough in the outline he has furnished to show that his life has been one of struggle and hardship , difficulties overcome by patience and perseverance , and * the evils of early poverty and defective education counteracted by strong principle and indomitable self-reliance . Wo cannot have too many or too copious—so long as they are simple—biographies of such men , the true heroes to whom popular worship should bo addressed in preference to men of the sword and sceptre . He was an Australian settler at the a ^ e of seventeen ; before eighteen ho was a " squatter" with cows and bullocks of his own , and a married man ; at nineteen he was a father . The news of the discovery of gold in California in th e autumn of 1848 reached New South Wales in January , 1849 . It was at first roceivod with doubt ; but the arrival of a ship shortly { afterwards with a quantity of the precious metal on board silenced incredulity . Then the same effect followed as was produced in England . The auri sacra fames induced hundreds , or thousands , of peaceful colonists to abandon home and property .

    friends and family , and rush off to Western America in the hopes of returning in a few months laden with fabulous wealth . This was the more natural from the fact that Australia had for some years been in a languishing condition The years 1841-2-3 were those of an almost universal bankruptcy throughout the colony , and Mr . Hargreaves takes a venial pride in telling us t hat he was one of the very few who passed through the crisis , paying 20 s . in the pound . It is beside our purpose , and-would occupy too much space , to trace out the many causes which contributed to this decline m the fortunes of Australian colonists . A strange remedy was discovered—a remedy which was little better than is suicide as a cure for " all the natural ills that flesh is heir to , " because it must , if persevered m , have proved suicidal to the farmer ' s permanent interests . It was the boiling down of sheep whole , so as to get every atom of tallow the carcass produced ; and this tallow actually brought a higher price in the market than the living

    sheep was nominally worth . We do not recollect , nor does Mr . Margreaves record , who was the ingenious inventor of the sheep-boiling process ; but we well remember our fears that there would soon be no mutton left m a colony where this strange and summary practice was resorted to . Mr . Hargreaves was one of those bitten with the gold mania , and was one of the first Australian Colonists who quitted the land of the south for California . He was not very successful in his new enterprise . He arrived just as the rainy season set in ; had some difficulty in procuring a waggon to convey him to " the diggins ; " was cheated and deserted by the driver he had engaged ; fixed on an unfavourable spot for his first essays , and , if afterwards rather more fortunate in this respect , never , it appears , earned enough to barely repay the hardship and misery of the life he led in a winter from whose severity people were dying all around him , while he jumped up nightly from his bed of pine branches laid on slates , to knock the snow off his tent , lest its own weight should break through the canvas . He had , however , gained much from his visit to the gold mines of California . We must here give his own words : —

    But far more important thoughts than those of present success or failure were , from the very first , growing up in my mind , and gradually assuming a body and a shape . My attention was naturally drawn to the form and geological structure of the surrounding country , and it soon struck me that I had , some eighteen years before , travelled through a country very similar to the one I was now in , in New South Wales . I said to myself , there are the same class of rocks , slates , quartz , granite , red soil , and everything else that appears necessary to constitute a gold field . So convinced did I become of the similarity of the two countries , that I mentioned my persuasion to my friend Davison , and expressed my belief that we should soon hear of a discovery of gold in that country , and my determination , if it was not discovered before my return to New South Wales , to prosecute a systematic search for it . Of my companions , some laughed at me and others reasoned against my theory . _

    But ridicule , most powerful against weak minds , seldom deters a strong one from following its own bent ; while reason is almost thrown away against those convictions which are either fanatical or inspired , as they prove to be false or correct . ~ 5 dtr . Hargrgaves left California to search for gold in New South Wales . He landed in Sydney in January , 1851 , started at once across the Blue Mountains to the spot he had " marked down" in his mind ' s eye , got a boy to guide him to the creek where there was water to be found , dug up a piece of the soil into a tin pan , washed it , and found { he gold . One or _ two more experiments made , with the same result , he was satisfied with his the olonial

    discovery , rode back to Sydney , announced the great tidings to C Government , and demanded his reward . The usual official caution was , of course , manifested by the local powers ; but eventually Mr . Hargreaves Was authorised to pursue his discoveries , being made a Commissioner of Crown lands , at the tremendous salary of 20 s . a-day . Eventually , when the truth of his statements had been verified , and he had practically demonstrated the existence of countless wealth in the Australian soil , the Legislative Council of New South Wales voted himl 6 , 660 Las Ms reward— " deducting , by way of discount , " he says , " the 5001 . I first received" —to enable him to pay the current expenses of his explorations .

    Such is the history of Ihe discovery of gold in Australia . Mr . Hargreaves , however , states candidly that Sir Roderick Murchison had seven or eight years earlier proclaimed the fact that gold would be found in the colony—founding his opinion on a careful examination of the ^ geological specimens of the country forwarded to him by Count Streleczki , and comparing them with those of the Ural , which he had himself visited . But Mr . Hargreaves knew nothing of geology , or any other science , and had never even heard of Sir Roderick Murchison . Such is fame . Would Sir Roderick have believed that there existed a civilised being , much more a countryman of his own , who had never heard his name , and would not have known whether he was a court physician , the new Lord Mayor , or a country gentleman of the Protectionist interest ? The book which Mr . Hargreaves has presented to the world is a curious medley . We have a history of Australia in five and twenty pages , and a history of gold mines , tedious to read , in forty-two more . Then follow two

    really interesting chapters , containing an account of the author ' s own adventures in California and Australia . A fifth chapter is devoted to an account of the various methods of working for gold , ancient and modern , the greater part of which is useless and almost out of place in a work which claims to be both practical and unpretending . And then follows a sixth chapter on the land question in Australia—that vexata qucestio which is still puzzling the brains of the colonists , and would infallibly confuse those of most of our readers . As far as wo can seu , the present rule of having a fixed upset price for all land is the most vicious part of the system in force . Mr . Hargreaves has added to his own work two letters from his friend , Mr . Simpson Davison , on the origin of gold . Like all theories which cannot be brought to the test of actual proof , it has a number of ugly objections to it which cannot be hastily got rid of . Still it is ingenious , and at least as good as any other on the subject . It is " that all alluvial gold has been distributed and deposited by means of a perishable * lava ; and that the auar tz veins , as well as some other dykes , traversing constants , have been io fissures of discharge , the only remains of the decomposed lava being gold , quartz , and other pebbles , clays , and ferruginous earths . " Those of our readers who aro scientific enough to relish the subject will find this theory well discussed and advocated by Mr . Davison .

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    ha THE LEAPE B , [ Satttbpay ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 3, 1855, page 116, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2076/page/20/