[In the following anonymous review, the critic applauds a reprinting of Kingsley's novels and responds to negative criticism published in The Saturday Review.]

We heartily welcome this tasteful reprint of the best of Henry Kingsley's novels, which are certainly not inferior to those by his more famous brother, if, indeed, as some excellent critics have maintained, they be not superior to them. He might have been the more famous of the two if he had happened to come before the public first; but Charles, being the elder by eleven years, had the start in authorship by about that period. In such cases the critics are apt to think that the younger man is aping the elder, and hopes to float his poor imitations of the latter on the strength of the family prestige. We recollect that, when Henry Kingsley's first book came out, The Saturday Review, in one of its familiar sarcastic articles, under the heading of “Big Brothers,” sneered at the author as a smaller and weaker “muscular Christian,” who was trying to gain popular favor by working the vein in which Charles had already made a literary fortune. We doubt whether the critic had read the novel he treated so contemptuously. If he had, he was either prejudiced or blind; for, whether Henry's books are inferior to Charles's or not, they cannot fairly be charged with being imitations thereof, either in matter or manner. They are, to be sure, characterized by the same sturdy English manliness, for their author was a “muscular Christian” like his brother, but, if his name were not Kingsley, we are confident that no reader or reviewer would see any family likeness between the two novelists.

We are inclined to regard Geoffry Hamlyn as the best of the three books, though Ravenshoe is the prime favorite with many. The former is less hackneyed in its locale, which is mainly Australia forty or more years ago, when it was just beginning to attract colonists. The novel is a vivid picture of men and things in that new country—better, in our opinion, than one finds in most books of travel and description. The scenery of the land is graphically depicted, the peculiar fauna and flora, the aboriginal “blacks” and their warfare with the new settlers reminding us, though in many particulars unlike it, of the conflict between the foreign and the native Indian races in the early history of our own country. The style is, on the whole, singularly simple, straightforward and vigorous, though often rich, glowing and poetical. It is largely conversational in its frank, free-and-easy manner, like that of an intelligent and genial gentleman telling you, face to face, of his experiences and reminiscences. If our readers did not become acquainted with the books years ago, we can assure them that they will enjoy doing it now. If they did read them when first published, they will be glad of the opportunity to renew the pleasure, and to own the novels in this excellent edition.