_Robbery under Arms_ not only contains Boldrewood's most dramatic plot, but his most skilful and sympathetic treatment of character. It is a distinct exception to the rest of his work. In the later stories the characters are brightly sketched, but with so casual a touch that they leave no permanent impression with the reader. The best excite no more than a passing admiration, whereas Kingsley's win lasting admiration and love. There can be no surer test of art and truth: it furnishes the one indubitable proof of clear vision, sympathy, and correct expression. Where the weakness of some of Boldrewood's characters is not due to deficiency of interest in them on the part of the author, it is the result of an attempt to copy life with an accuracy which sacrifices picturesqueness. The attempt to preserve absolute truth in every detail of the life-story of John Redgrave, the hero of _The Squatter's Dream_, seems distinctly a case in point. In no other novel is there so complete a description of Australian squatting life--its varying success and failure, its solid comforts and wholesome happiness in times of prosperity. Redgrave is one of the most elaborately drawn of all the author's characters; there is the fullest sense of probability in every incident; the entire story is plainly a direct transcript of life; nothing at first seems wanting. But when the book is laid aside, the reader realises that he has scarcely been once moved by it. He has felt a transient pity for the hero's misfortunes, and a mild satisfaction at his modified ultimate success--nothing more. The main defect here appears to consist in the central motive of Redgrave's struggles being limited to purely personal ambition. His aim is no higher than that of a speculator in a hurry to be rich, and when he fails, he gets little more than the sympathy which is commonly given to the man who plays for a high stake and loses. His love for Maud Stangrove, which might have been made a controlling and ennobling influence, ranks only as an incident. It comes after the main impression of his character has been given. Beyond doubt he represents a real type; no error has been made in this respect; his failure to win higher favour with us arises from his too close approximation to the common clay. There is absent just that small element of the ideal with which even the sternest of the apostles of realism in letters have found it impracticable to dispense.