The descriptions of English society which are amongst Mrs. Praed's best work are marked by the same clear vision of the darker side of human nature that is displayed in the treatment of English character in her Australian novels. Her view of the 'smart' section of English society is somewhat severe. After reading several of her novels, one could almost imagine her defending her literary preference in the words of Esmé Colquhoun, in _Affinities_: 'What is our mission--we writers--but to distil the essence of the age? The critics tell us that we are complex, that we are corrupt, that we are anatomists of diseased minds. We reply: The age is complex; the age is corrupt, and the society we depict is the outcome of influences which have been gathering through centuries of advancing civilization ... the reign of healthy melodrama is over; the reign of analysis has commenced. We make dramas of our sensations, not of our actions.' The same view is expressed in an article contributed by Mrs. Praed to the _North American Review_ in 1890. 'Analysis, not action,' she notes as the prevailing characteristic of the fiction produced by female writers, 'as it is also of our modern social life.' But, 'to dissect human nature under its society swathings needs,' she adds, 'the skill of a Balzac or a Thackeray, while the feminine counterpart of a Balzac or a Thackeray is difficult to find.' That indefinable power which includes sympathetic insight and does not overlook whatever is good even in the most repulsive character is, perhaps, what the describers in fiction of modern society need even more than skill in dissection. To observe and dissect what is corrupt is easier than to make the record of corruption presentable. Mrs. Praed's own tale _The Bond of Wedlock_, with all its undoubted cleverness, its realism and dramatic strength, fails in its due impression as a picture of latter-day English morals because it is too sordid, too completely devoid of any of the better qualities of humanity. To see Mrs. Praed in her most agreeable and natural moods one must revert to the novels in which the scenery and people of her own country are described. In _Miss Jacobsen's Chance_ we have her liveliest example of humour and caricature, in _The Head Station_ her most cheerful pictures of country life, and in _Christina Chard_ some account of the society with which colonists of wealth surround themselves in London. The latter story has several finely dramatic scenes and is a sample of the author's mature work. Hers is the most comprehensive view that we have of the social and political life of the Antipodes, and for this and for her minutely recorded knowledge of her own sex she will long continue to hold and deserve a foremost place in Australian literature. TASMA.