Page:Australia and the Empire.djvu/227

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NATIVE AUSTRALIANS
195

form of civilisation. The ever-lengthening, though often imperceptible, link that connects all the ages can never be broken.

It seems almost an anti-climax, but perhaps I should remark that the future Australian is to be both a "Free-trader" and an "Atheist," which strikes one as singular, remembering that the essayist's fellow-colonists are at least professedly pious, and most undeniably Protectionist. Having, however, formed my own opinion of this literary effusion, I could not help wondering what some of the genuine old pioneers of the colony would have to say to it—the men who, despite this Sir Thomas More in short clothes, had planted the seeds of civilisation in these far-off sunny southern lands where they had built their home, and made the wilderness to blossom as the rose. I had not long to wait. After a due interval there came to hand a new number of the same salmon-coloured Review, containing an article by an old colonist who administered severe chastisement, more in sorrow than in anger, to the youthful visionary. With fine effect the older man began by recalling a memorable passage in the Aryan Household of Dr. Hearn—by far the greatest philosophical work yet written in Australia. In that passage the learned