worse knave than he who uses his tongue for the same purpose. But is there a livelihood in the pen? Perchance the subject of this notice can answer that question more fully than any man on this side of the Equator. If drudging on in patient obscurity, and suffering the slights and "stings of outrageous fortune," may be worth the designation of a "livelihood," then has the author of "Australian Wild Flowers" indeed lived. Far from me is the desire to degrade literature by the inquiry—is there not some stone-breaking to be had in the place of a profession of letters? Perhaps the question may be useful to many a youth of promising talent, who is impatient to abandon a lucrative post for the author'squill. Let such consider that the press is the only opening for their productions, and even here they may be ousted by the army of English scribes who invade the columns of colonial newspapers year by year. Nevertheless, if we are tohave an Australian literature pure and simple, someone must make a beginning. A man may labour with his pen like a horse in a mill till he becomes as blind and as wretched, but his work is not forgotten, and if he has but laid one small stone in the foundation of the noble edifice, he has accomplished more than Dives with a million at his bankers.
Amongst those who have toiled long and honorably in the cause of Australian literature, Geo. E. Loyau may take first rank. For thirty years he has been connected with the colonial press, in the capacity of editor, leader-writer, and general contributor; whilst in poetry, essays, and fiction, hehas produced more than any other living Australian author. Twenty-three years ago he published his first poem "The Australian Seasons," in book form. It was reprinted by several of the English newspapers, and received most favourable notices in the colonial press. In quick succession followed "The Pleasures of Friendship," "Australian Wild Flowers," "Colonial Lyrics," "Tales in Verse," and many more of a less ambitious order. To a man with such
