been of little worth, the victory in their earlier days having been to the physical rather than to the intellectual.  The child is naturally—­for surely disobedience is an ‘original sin’ with nine children out of ten—­only too disposed to take advantage of the views held by its parents, and gradually as it grows older, disobedience passes into disrespect and want of respect into want of affection.  Such a thing as perfect confidence, in the French sense of the word, between a parent and his or her grown-up child is most rare.  ’Everyone for himself, and devil take the hindmost, is the motto of the young Australian.  He cares for nobody, and nobody need care for him, so far as his thoughts on the subject are concerned.  Maternal affection cannot, however, be easily quenched, and consequently the child gets all the best of the bargain.

Social relations are wider, therefore less easy to speak about decidedly, than family relations.  In the early days there were but few social distinctions.  Everyone was hail-fellow-well-met with everyone else, and the common struggle merged all differences of birth, wealth, and education.  In a charming little work called ’Some Social Aspects of South Australian Life,’ which was published in Adelaide about two years ago’, a most realistic description is given of the sympathetic mode of living of the first settlers; and as it has never been reprinted in England, I extract a few sentences here and there, which may give some idea of the primitive existence there described: 

’The necessaries of life were produced in abundance, the comforts were slowly reached, and the luxuries had to be done without.  There was very little difference in the actual circumstances of different classes—­some had property and some had none’ (this was before the gold-fever); ’but property was unsaleable for money, and barter only exchanged one unsaleable article for another’ (and yet these are the people who nowadays groan about money going out of the colony, and would measure its prosperity by the excess of exports over imports).* [* The parentheses are my own.] ’Nobody employed hired labour who could possibly do the work himself, and everyone had to turn his or her hand to a great deal of miscellaneous work, most of which would be called menial and degrading in an old community. . .  Thus gradually the financial position of the colony improved by means of the well-directed industry of the settlers, and they owed much to the helpfulness and good management of the wives, sisters, and daughters of each household. . .  Perhaps, never in any human society did circumstances realize the ideas of the community of labour and the equality of the sexes, so fully as in South Australia in its early days.’  Youth and love, hope and trust, were the only stock in marriage of young couples, so that a new-comer is said to have remarked, ’Why, it is nothing to get married here!  A few mats, and cane-bottomed chairs, and the house is furnished.’  A