Perhaps the paradox that a people may read a great deal and yet not be interested in literature could hardly be applied to the Australians, but it is a fact that they make no special effort to encourage the growth of a literature of their own. By no means unconscious of their achievements in other directions--in political innovations, in sport and athletics--they appear not to take any pride in or see the advantage of promoting creative intellectual work. Will this be considered natural and reasonable, as already they are supplied with books and plays and pictures from England and Europe, or as a proof of thoughtlessness and neglect? 'Why,' asked a critic in the _Edinburgh Review_ in 1819, 'should the Americans write books when a six weeks' passage brings them, in their own tongue, our sense, science, and genius in bales and hogsheads?' Are the Australians of these days asking themselves a similar question? It would seem so. In 1894 they imported books, magazines and newspapers from the United Kingdom to the value of £363,741: this, too, at a time when most of the colonies were understood to be rigidly economising in consequence of a financial crisis. A decade before the amount was not far short of a hundred thousand pounds higher. Foremost in his list of the salient intellectual tendencies of the native population of the United States Mr. Bryce places 'a desire to be abreast of the best thought and work of the world everywhere, and to have every form of literature and art adequately represented and excellent of its kind, so that America shall be felt to hold her own among the nations.' And he further attributes to them 'an admiration for literary or scientific eminence, an enthusiasm for anything that can be called genius, with an over-readiness to discover it.'