What Oliver Wendell Holmes called 'the Robinson Crusoe touches' in the story--including the experiences of the marooned party at Macquarie Harbour, and those of Rex in his escape through the Devil's Blowhole--also help to leave with the reader of the novel an ineffaceable memory. HENRY KINGSLEY. What are the special qualities that constitute the permanent charm of Henry Kingsley's early novels? Some English critics, judging him by principles of literary art, have said that his best work is in many places of slovenly construction, deficient in dramatic power, and imitative in expression. A series of episodes, they observe, supply the place of a plot in _The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn_; the central motive of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ is an impossible story of a young woman's self-sacrifice; and the Thackerayan mannerisms in _Ravenshoe_ are an offensive blemish upon an otherwise fine novel. As a set-off to these defects, which are of less real consequence than may appear from their brief enumeration, Kingsley has been freely credited with a certain ever-pleasing vivacity and gallantry of style far too rare in literature to be overlooked. The warmest of his admirers in his own country have even attempted to raise him to a position above that of his more celebrated brother. The task of comparing Kingsley the poet, preacher, and reformer, with Kingsley the laughing, genial teller of stories who never cherished a hobby in his life, would seem to be as superfluous on general grounds as it is premature in respect of the only possible question as to which of them is likely to be best remembered a generation or two hence. Only in one particular does it seem quite safe to predict--namely, that whatever may be the future standing of one who is said to have never penned a story without a didactic purpose of some kind, Henry Kingsley is certain of a permanent place in the literature of the young country where he encountered both the best and the worst experiences of his life. The English estimate of his novels--mainly a technical one--having been recorded, it seems to the present writer that something of interest might be said of them from, as far as possible, the Australian point of view, the standpoint of the reader who knows the country of Sam Buckley and Alice Brentwood, and has lived some of their life. Two out of the three best novels are largely Australian in matter, and the reasons for their enduring popularity in the colonies are among the best grounds of the favour in which the author is held by the average English reader, to leave out of reckoning for the moment the literary expert. _Geoffry Hamlyn_ and _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ have obvious faults, but in most respects they are the highest, because the least artificial, expression of Kingsley's powers. A consideration of some of their more noticeable qualities will perhaps afford the clearest answer to the question which opens this essay.