The superior position usually accorded to _Ravenshoe_ among Kingsley's novels is merited more by the soundness of its plot than by the naturalness of its characters. It was the author's first essay in pure romance, and, with Henry Kingsley, to build character from imagination was always largely, sometimes extravagantly, to idealise. He loved to people old country houses with walking mysteries, to unravel tangled genealogies, and discover secrets of youthful folly, to apportion property to rightful heirs, and endow his characters with a superhuman generosity. When Charles Ravenshoe is recovering from the long illness which terminates the full series of his misfortunes, he sends for Welter, the man who might be considered his arch-enemy, who not so long before that had seduced Charles's sister and stole his _fiancée_. Ravenshoe is represented as forgetting all his newly-suffered wrongs, and thinking only of Welter as his favourite schoolfellow and youthful companion. Anticipating doubts as to the feasibility of this, the author proceeds to discuss the point with the reader, as he does in many similar instances throughout the story. He appears to have a constant anxiety about the impression he is making, and his comments and confidences certainly become distasteful. But this foible goes only a small way to discount the sterling merits of the novel. ADA CAMBRIDGE. Towards the close of 1890 the Australian booksellers--a cautious, conservative class in their attitude towards new fiction, especially that produced by the adventurous female writer of these latter days--began to display so marked an interest in the work of Ada Cambridge, that one not acquainted with the circumstances of the case might have credited them with a friendly--possibly a patriotic--desire to give due place to a newly-risen native genius. And when, in the following year, another story from the same pen appeared, the popularity of the author was firmly established. The neat red volumes were on every stall; the Mudie of Melbourne gave them a place of honour in his show-window, and the leading critical review said that the second story possessed a charm which ought to induce even the person who ignored fiction on principle to make an exception in its favour. It was the kind of gratifying recognition that the public always believes itself eager to offer the deserving young writer. Yet Ada Cambridge's literary work had extended over no less a period than fifteen years. Of course, much of this delay in securing recognition might have been avoided. Probably in England she could have won a substantial reputation in a third of the time, and with half the labour expended by her in contributing to the Australian press. But, as the wife of a country clergyman, she had other matters besides literature to occupy her attention, and was content to write when there happened to be leisure for it, and to see her work in a few of the leading colonial newspapers.