In the difficult task of rendering attractive the restricted life of the squatting class, who form the country aristocracy of Australia, Mrs. Praed has combined humour and a terse cultivated style of expression with a dramatic sense, which has guided her past details that are merely commonplace. The natural surroundings of a head station furnish materials for bright little sketches immediately associated with some romantic episode in the story; there is no vague straining to create 'atmosphere,' or anything that a judicious reader would skip. The beautiful Honoria Longleat reclining in a hammock under the vine-trellised verandah at Kooralbyn, stray shafts of sunlight imparting a warm chestnut tint to her hair, a trailing withe of orange begonia touching her shoulder, a book in her lap and a bundle of guavas on the ground beside her; Elsie Valliant waiting for her lover on the rocky crossing of Luya Dell, framed between two giant cedars and outlined cameo-like against the blue sky; Gretta Reay, the proud, sturdy little belle of Doondi, with upturned sleeves at her churn, pretending unconcern when she is surprised by her English visitors--these are some of the pictures in which the author commemorates much that is noteworthy in the warmth and colour of tropical Australia and in the daily life of its inhabitants. This fondness for posing her heroines is one of the minor features of her work. Its results in some of her later novels are not, however, always agreeable: a few of the scenes in the history of the unhappy Judith Fountain in _Affinities_ are painful, and the portrait, in _The Brother of the Shadow_, of Mrs. Vascher as she lies in the mesmerist's blue-silk-lined room is an unnecessary ghastly elaboration.