AUSTRALIA^f LITERATURE. 803 



him there soon after 1834. He commenced his practice of 

 the legal profession, of which he was destined to become so 

 distinguished an ornament, in 1845. He contributed to the 

 Atlas and Empire newspapers. In tlie year 1848 he began 

 his political career, and was elected to represent Cook and 

 Westmoreland. In 1 856' he was appointed Attorney-General 

 in the administration of Mr., afterwards Sir, Charles Cowper. 

 He came into office as Premier in 1863, and in 1873 he 

 retired from Parliament, and was a])pointed Chief Justice of 

 the Supreme Court of New South Wales, which position he 

 occupied until his death. His style in writing wasnotunHke 

 that of his oratory — clear, concise, and effective. A sound 

 classic, a good mathematician, a ready and powerful debater, 

 there is little doubt, had not his absorption in politics denied 

 him literary leisui'e, that his writings would have furnished 

 for him an enduring monument. A master of our Anglo- 

 Saxon tongue, whether written or s])oken,in purity of diction, 

 in force, in the wide grasp of great subjects, no man of his 

 day excelled him. In his many-sided literary career lie 

 made various tentative etlbrts, comic, dramatic, jirose, verse, 

 fiction ; but the absorbing labours of political life left no 

 leisure for purely literary effort. But few, if any, of these 

 fragments are, I fancy, preserved. One of them, a serial in 

 imitation of the early numbers of" Pickwick," was an exceed- 

 ingly clever production of its kind, more particularly as the 

 work of a schoolboy. 



I may be pardoned for having named primarily those 

 writers, who, either l)y birth or rearing, were connected with 

 New South Wales. But it will be seen that the children of 

 the Mother Colony must necessarily, in order of seniority, 

 take precedence of those of Tasmania, New Zealand, and 

 Victoria. In Sydney my boyhood's days were passed, and 

 the men whom I have mentioned were personally known to 

 me, the majority, indeed, being schoolmates ; the dates given 

 will prove how short a time elapsed after the dreary, and in 

 some respects discouraging, foundation of the colony before 

 the irrepressible emanations from the sons of song commenced 

 to irradiate the primeval forests. If I dwell upon this cir- 

 cumstance it is for the purpose of repeating the proposition 

 that, given the ordinary environments of civilisation, any 

 British community will exhibit the same personal differen- 

 tiation of ty})e, and evolve the same average of intellectual 

 development. Of a later day than those last mentioned came 

 Henry Clarence Kendall, a true-born Australian, the child 



