'My friend,' says one writer, 'was one of those many geniuses who appear to be born to prove the vast amount of contradictory elements which can exist in the same individual. In his case these contradictions were so apparent--and, if I may use the term, so contradictory--that, unless one knew him, it was impossible to believe what his nature was. On the one hand, he was recklessly generous, impulsively partisan, morbidly sensitive, and highly chivalrous; on the other, forgetful of obligations, defiantly antagonistic, unnecessarily caustic, and affectedly cynical.... His life was one of impulse, and the direction of the impulse depended solely on surrounding circumstances.... He has passed from us at an early age, leaving behind him some enemies made, perhaps, by his own waywardness; but he has left many friends, too,--friends who loved him for the good that was in him.' In another sketch of the author, his character is thus summed up: 'Caustic he was sometimes, and cynical always; but beneath there beat a heart of gold--a heart tender and pitiful as a woman's.' This estimate is amply justified by the power of pathos and the often tender analysis of human feeling in _For the Term of his Natural Life_, however absent the same qualities may seem in many of the shorter stories. An interesting picture of Clarke's personality is given by a writer in the Sydney _Bulletin_: 'His wit was keen and polished, his humour delicate and refined, and his powers of description masterly.... His face was a remarkable one--remarkable for its singular beauty. Like Coleridge, the poet, he was "a noticeable man with large grey eyes," and one had but to look into them to perceive at once the light of genius.... He was one of the best talkers I have ever met. Like Charles Lamb, he had a stutter which seemed to emphasise and add point to his witticisms. As in his writings, he had the knack of saying brilliant things, and scattering _bons mots_ with apparent ease, so that in listening to him one felt the pleasure that is derived from such books as Horace Walpole's correspondence and those of the French memoir-writers.... He knew not how to care for money, yet he had none of those vices which ordinarily reduce men of genius to destitution, and are cloaked beneath the hackneyed phrase, "He had no enemy but himself."' In all his journalistic criticism, Marcus Clarke scarcely more than pointed to the material which the life of such cities as Melbourne and Sydney offer a novelist capable of work like that of Mr. W. D. Howells, or the series of tales of urban society in America by Mr. Marion Crawford. There is now an opportunity, and, one might almost say, a need, for fiction which shall also, in effect, be salutary criticism. The Antipodes have lately illustrated the fact that a single decade will sometimes witness a notable change in the conditions of an entire people in a new and rapidly-developing country.