will comfort me by its evidence of unusual insight or sympathy.  Yesterday he read your article in The Melbourne Review, and said at the end—­’This is an excellently written article, which would do credit to any English periodical’ adding the very uncommon testimony, ‘I shall keep this.’  Then he told me of some passages in it which gratified me by that comprehension of my meaning—­ that laying of the finger on the right spot—­which is more precious than praise, and forthwith he went to lay The Melbourne Review in the drawer he assigns to any writing about me that gives him pleasure.  For he feels on my behalf more than I feel on my own, at least in matters of this kind.  If you come to England again when I happen to be in town I hope that you will give me the pleasure of seeing you under happier auspices than those of your former visit.—­I am, dear madam, yours sincerely, M. G. Lewes.”  The receipt of this kind and candid letter gave me much pleasure; and, although on the strength of that, I cannot boast of being a correspendent of that great woman, I was able to say that I had seen and talked with her, and that she considered me a competent critic of her work.  Mrs. Oliphant says that George Eliot’s life impelled her to make an involuntary confession—­“How have I been handicapped in life?  Should I have done better if I had been kept, like her, in a mental green-house and taken care of?  I have always had to think of other people and to plan everything for my own pleasure, it is true, very often, but always in subjection to the necessity which bound me to them.  To bring up the boys—­my own and Frank’s—­for the service of God was better than to write a fine novel, if it had been in my power to do so.”  The heart knows its own bitterness.  There might have been some points in which George Eliot might have envied Mrs. Oliphant.

CHAPTER X.

RETURN FROM THE OLD COUNTRY.

Before leaving Scotland I arranged that my friend, Mrs. Graham of the strenuous life and 30 pounds a year, should undertake the care of my aunts, to their mutual satisfaction.  My last days in England were spent in either a thick London fog or an equally undesirable Scotch mist, which shrouded everything in obscurity, and made me long for the sunny skies and the clear atmosphere of Australia.  I told my friends that in my country it either rained or let it alone.  Indeed, the latest news from all Australia was that it had let it alone very badly, and that the overstocking of stations during the preceding good seasons had led to enormous losses.  Sheepfarmers made such large profits in good seasons that they were apt to calculate that it was worth while to run the risk of drought; but experience has shown that overstocking does not really pay.  The making of dams, the private and public provision of water in the underground reservoirs by artesian bores, and the facilities for travelling stock by such ways have all lessened the risks which