On the average, colonial girls possess more than their share of good looks; but ‘beauties’ are rare, and the sun plays the deuce with complexions.  The commonest type is the jolly girl who, though she has large hands and feet, no features and no figure, yet has a taking little face, which makes you say:  ‘By Jove, she is not half bad-looking!’ Brunettes are, of course, in the majority; and every third or fourth girl has beautiful brown eyes and an abundance of coarsish hair—­which, by the way, she probably dresses in an untidy knob, all corners and no rotundity.

Her manners have lost the boisterousness of school days, but still often want toning down according to English ideas.  Her frankness and good-fellowship are captivating, and you feel that all her faults spring from the head, and not from the heart.  She is rarely affected, and is singularly free from ‘notions,’ though by no means wanting in ideas and in conversation of a not particularly cultured description.  With a keen idea of the value of money and the benefits to be derived from its possession, she never takes it into consideration in choosing her husband:  her ideal of whom is above all things ’manly’—­the type that used to be known under the description of ‘muscular Christians.’

In religion her views are not pronounced.  She attends church pretty regularly, but is entirely free from superstition, though not always from intolerance.  Adoration of the priesthood is not at all in her line.  For politics she cares nothing, except in Victoria where naturally she espouses her father’s side warmly, but in an irrational, almost stupid, way.  Art is a dead letter to her, and so is literature, unless an unceasing and untiring devotion to three-volume novels be counted under that head.  To music, according to her lights, she professes, and often feels, a strong leaning.

There is one thing about her that strikes you disagreeably in society.  It is her want of conversation with ladies and married people.  To a bachelor, to whom she has just been introduced, she will chatter away nineteen to the dozen; but, even in her own, house, she has no idea of the social duties.  Marriage, in her opinion, is a Rubicon, which, once crossed, if it does not altogether debar from the pleasures of maiden and bachelorhood, at least makes it necessary for married folk to shift for themselves.  To talk or dance with a married man would be a terrible waste of time; and as for married women, she expects to join that holy army of martyrs in the course of time, and will then be quite contented with the same treatment as she has meted out to others.  The politeness which springs from a sense of duty to others is little known to the Australian girl.  If she likes you, she will make herself very pleasant; but if you are not worth wasting powder and shot on, you must expect to realize that disagreeable truth in all its nakedness.