We read the first few chapters of this book from a sense of duty and a coiuciontious doe'tre to do justice to a colonial author, whose preface intimated that hia aim was to realistically and faithfully dopict station life in Now Zealand ; we read the balance with out rising, because we liked it. The writer has very°sensibly vvovon his description of the phase of colonial life to which ho refers intoanarrative, ostensibly autobiographical, which has) the merest thread for a plot, it is true, bub which successfully sugarcoats tho pill ho desires to administer. Not that the story itself is altogether uninteresting, it is a pat' 3 or so from the lives of a number of commonplace persons, who are animated with the same passions, moved by tho same desires, as tho people whom we meet every day and it has for its basis the old, old Bfcory—old as tho hills, unvarying in its General features, and yet to each one who enacts ib over again, having something which none of the others over possessed. Nor is there lack of that literary dexterity Which sometimes charms the reader and draws him on from page to uan-e in search of new beauties. Some good descriptive "bits" there are, some fair ,« W er of narrative, as for instance the ascription of an up-country race meeting in the North Island, while the Wanganui CuD.Ja won by an outsider euphoniously rhrfafcenod i)ot-und-go-one, winch is Mallvan excellent one, and the dramatic incident iv the church which precedes the fall of the tfWtain v" virtue triumphant, -ml vico dra''(?ad oil to merited punish it the goal where all pood ■toriei-and piny* according to Miss K^^hofha"rS^cdU,te ml >tatien to overload hi* work with colour, and com pensates himself by point/ into minuteness of detail, which may seem to bumper the story, but certainly justifies his claim to fidelity. The story may be # briefly described without destroying_tho interest For tho reader. Tho hero finds himself in England, unable to follow an academical career, bcinp more addicted to outdoor sports than to ntudy; *o it is decided to ship him oil to the colonies This was in the early days, when it

was a popular sunerstition at Home that any person unlitteil i'or i!ie ordinary I pursuits of life would .;c for the colonies J provided he could ride a horse. 