SOURCE: “Kingsley's Geoffry Hamlyn and the Art of Landscape,” in Southerly, Vol. 37, No. 3, September, 1977, pp. 274-99.

[In the following essay, Dixon interprets Geoffry Hamlyn within the symbolic and aesthetic contexts of landscape art, describing the work as a historical novel and a “sympathetic social document.”]

When writing on “Geoffry Hamlyn and its Australian Setting” in 1963, J. C. Horner was interested in explaining the quality of Kingsley's descriptions of the Australian landscape with reference to the demands of the novel's genre.¹ He wished to correct the “surviving attitude” to the book as a “conventional saga of colonial life, written for the English market”, and asserted unequivocally that “It is not a social treatise, or a travel book, or emigration propaganda disguised as a romance, as many of its predecessors were”. “Other novelists”, Horner suggested, “whose primary aim was not literary, had attempted to give their works cohesion and interest by infusing into them sensational and romance elements, but Kingsley was the first who deliberately made the Australian scene subservient to his main aim of writing a romance” (p. 5). These same assumptions were operative in John Barnes's Henry Kingsley and Colonial Fiction (1971) and, as the Australian Writers series for which he wrote is readily available to the general reader, this seems to have become the accepted attitude: “Kingsley continued the line of emigrant success stories initiated by Rowcroft, but unlike his predecessors, he did not merely use the romantic form as a vehicle to carry description … his handling of descriptive detail is generally controlled by his literary aims … The result is not another ‘guidebook’ but a novel”. (p. 38).

The implications of this interpretation have now become fully manifest in criticism. Geoffry Hamlyn is seen as fiction and as romance; for the sake of its status it has been separated from the literature of travel and description; the handling of the Australian scene is such that it is made “subservient” to the generic demands of romance. Horner has effectively demonstrated that there is a “dramatic and effective concord between nature and human emotion” and has used the demands of the romance form as the sole criterion of successful description: “The important point is not whether his portrayal is photographically exact or distinctively Australian but whether he has made it a successful element of his work” (p. 14). It would seem futile to deny the validity of J. C. Horner's conclusions about the relationship between romantic characterization and landscape description. However, it is possible to question the initial premise of both Horner and Barnes: that Geoffry Hamlyn must be measured exclusively against the earlier Australian tradition of fiction and romance. Horner wrote in a spirit of academic debate, motivated by a desire to correct a “surviving attitude” to the novel. As is usual in such critical environments, the case was overstated and more recently an alternative premise has again begun to make its presence felt. In the closing pages of his book, Barnes noticed the “topographical” accuracy and “picturesque” features of Kingsley's landscape description—characteristics of the non-fictional literature of the colonial period—but made no real attempt to recognize the possibility of this other tradition having a determining role at least equal to the demands of romance characterization. More recently, in “Geoffry Hamlyn: a study in literary survival”, G. A. Wilkes noticed aspects of the novel which had received insufficient attention in previous critical assessment.² The value of this article lies in its recognition of the historical purposes of the novel and its relation to the non-fictional colonial tradition. Wilkes recognized that “the novel is not contemporary with the events it describes” (Kingsley arrived in Australia in 1853, while the novel is set in the 1820s and 1830s) and that “the starting-point for criticism of Geoffry Hamlyn must be that it is an historical novel, an attempt to reconstruct a period of a generation earlier”; he suggested that “the best standards of comparison are contemporary accounts” such as the published journals of Sir Thomas Mitchell (pp. 64, 67). There are here the symptoms of another premise about Kingsley's use of the Australian landscape: that the non-fictional literature of the 1820s and 1830s was as influential as the genre of romance fiction in determining significant sections of the novel. Certain implications arising from this new premise demand immediate recognition. First, that the landscape settings of the novel have a strong relation to a non-fictional colonial tradition that has been used more or less as the source material for Geoffry Hamlyn as an historical novel. Second, that in contrast to the novels of Rowcroft and his imitators, this tradition has been all but ignored by literary critics, so that its artistic merit and cultural significance have been grossly underestimated.

The colonial tradition in which The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn is to be placed may be conveniently described as “the art of landscape”. The term was first used by the fine arts critic Christopher Hussey, and later, by Russel Noyes in his study of Wordsworth and the Art of Landscape (1968):

In his spirited book, The Picturesque, [Christopher Hussey] first revealed the extensive interchange among the arts concerned with landscape in the eighteenth century and coined the term the art of landscape to describe the singleness of those arts.

(p. vi)

So close, indeed, at moments [during the latter part of the 18th and early 19th centuries] were the poetry of Nature, landscape painting, landscape gardening, and the art of travel, that they lost their isolation, as separate arts, and combined into the art of landscape.

(p. 3)

With the exception of its visual manifestations, covered by Bernard Smith in European Vision and the South Pacific (1960), the very highly developed art of landscape in colonial Australia has been more or less ignored. And yet it represents one of the major expressions of the interests of the educated classes of the period, achieving in its literary manifestation a considerable artistic and intellectual merit. By the 1820s and 1830s there were, in Australia, at least three distinct but related traditions within the art of landscape. The first is deeply rooted in neo-classical art: it is characterized by the creation of a fictitious landscape, or the appreciation of an actual one, by reference to the aesthetic categories of the sublime, the beautiful, and the picturesque. The second derives from advances in natural science, particularly the increasing empiricism and analysis which characterize its separate disciplines; the treatment of a landscape in this tradition usually involves systematic analysis of the various natural productions of a region in order to define its distinctness from all other regions. The third tradition is a synthetic one, drawing upon both the neo-classical and empirical approaches. Unfortunately, one cannot demonstrate that Kingsley had read any particular work, but the art of landscape may be assumed to have been an important part of his cultural milieu. Kingsley himself was an interested traveller who made watercolour illustrations of his travels (now stored in the Picture Collection of the Mitchell Library) and published an article on “Travelling in Victoria” in the Macmillan's Magazine (January 1861). The following pages demonstrate Kingsley's debt to each of the landscape traditions in turn, and suggest some of the contributions which the presence of this material in his novel makes to its success as an historical and social document.

J. C. Horner has described the landscape settings of Geoffry Hamlyn in terms of their “symbolic” function in Kingsley's romance characterization. However, one of the most representative settings of the novel—a homestead set in the Australian landscape—and much of the characterization immediately associated with it derives substantially, if not totally, from the neo-classical tradition of the art of landscape. This tradition involves the creation of an “ideal” or fictitious landscape, or the appreciation of an actual one, in such a manner that it is composed according to the aesthetic categories of the sublime, the beautiful, and the picturesque. Thomas Shepherd, for example, in his Lectures on Landscape Gardening (1836), specified that each landscape, or each view taken of a landscape, must appear to be a unified whole, composed according to strict aesthetic principles:

The principal art in Landscape Gardening consists in giving designs … for a new creation of a numberless variety of objects, to be brought into harmony with other objects which are already existing, perhaps separate and distinct, and to bring the whole into one harmonious perspective—overawing the mind by its sublimity, if the scenery is sublime; delighting the mind if it is varied, picturesque, and soothing; and pleasing the mind, if the landscape is beautiful, solemn, and still.

(pp. 10-11)³

Apart from the three basic types of landscape—sublime, beautiful, and picturesque—Shepherd also recognized the possibility of creating a landscape of a “mixed character”, the criterion of wholeness, harmony, or composition remaining, of course, fundamental to all four types (p. 28). One memorable feature of the descriptions of Baroona and Garoopna in The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn is that each has this unity of mood and composed visual structure characteristic of the landscape art of the period in its neo-classical style, including painting, gardening, and verbal description. An examination of the individual details of the description of Baroona will reveal that Kingsley has drawn upon the traditionally sanctioned components of all four types, to create a unified composition that is perhaps best defined as a landscape of a “mixed character”:

For many miles I had distinguished the new huts, placed at the apex of a great cape at the continent of timber which ran down from the mountains into the plains. I thought they had chosen a strange place for their habitation, as there appeared no signs of a watercourse near it. It was not till I pulled up within a quarter of a mile of my destination that I heard a hoarse roar as if from the bowels of the earth, and found that I was standing on the edge of a glen about four hundred feet deep, through which a magnificent snow-fed river poured ceaselessly, here flashing bright among the bars of rock, there lying in dark, deep reaches, under tall, white stemmed trees.

The scene was so beautiful and novel that I paused and gazed at it. Across the glen, behind the houses, rose up a dark mass of timbered ranges, getting higher and steeper as far as the eye could reach, while to the north-east the river's course might be traced through the plains by the timber that fringed the water's edge, and sometimes feathered some tributary gully almost to the level of the flat lofty tableland. On either side of it, down behind down folded one over the other, and, bordered by great forests, led the eye towards the river's source, till the course of the deep valley could no longer be distinguished, lost among the distant ranges; but above where it had disappeared, rose a tall blue peak with streaks of snow.

I rode down a steep pathway, and crossed a broad gravelly ford. As my horse stopped to drink I looked delighted up the vista which opened on my sight. The river, partly overshadowed by tall trees, was hurrying and spouting through upright columns of basalt, which stood in groups everywhere like the pillars of a ruined city; in some places solitary, in others, clustered together like fantastic buildings; while a hundred yards above was an island, dividing the stream, on which, towering above the variety of low green shrubs which covered it, three noble fern trees held their plumes aloft, shaking with the concussion of falling water.

I crossed the river. A gully, deep at first, but getting rapidly shallower, led up by a steep ascent to the tableland above, and as I reached the summit I found myself at Major Buckley's front door. They had, with good taste, left such trees as stood near the house—a few deep-shadowed light-woods and black wattles, which formed pretty groups in what I could see was marked out for a garden. Behind, the land began to rise, at first, in park-like timbered forest glades, and farther back, closing into dense deep woodlands.

“What a lovely place they will make of this in time!” I said to myself …⁴

The description of Baroona is a unified “piece” of landscape description which consists of a series of individually composed prospects described by Hamlyn as he travels through it. This was a characteristic feature of the travel literature of the period: dynamic composition is achieved by the movement of the traveller through the landscape, while static composition is given to each successive prospect according to the principles of landscape painting. It is the product of a mutual exchange between the printed text and pictorial illustrations which usually occurred in close proximity in works of travel. It was usual for the writer of a travel journal to structure his account chronologically and topographically, so that the narrative reflected his movement through a landscape. As each individual prospect was revealed to view and described, he would turn to the rules of composition of landscape painting and often copy the composition of a specific illustration used to accompany the text. The relationship between plate and text can be observed in the works of Joseph Lycett, L. A. Meredith, J. S. Prout and others. The text of L. A. Meredith's An Autumn Ramble by the Wye (1834), for example, was written to accompany twenty engravings from drawings by such popular landscape artists as Copley Fielding and David Cox. The narrative follows her journey from the mouth to the source of the Wye and contains a number of distinct set pieces of description such as the following quotation from a tour guide-book which is accompanied by an engraving of the same prospect after a drawing by David Cox:

The spectator stands upon the edge of a precipice the depth of which is most awful, and the river winds at his feet. The right side-screen is Piersfield ridge richly wooded; the left, is a belt of rocks, over which appear the Severn, and the fine shores between Thornbury and Bristol, rising behind each other in admirable swells, which unite in most graceful curves. The first foreground is to the eye, a view from the clouds upon earth, and the rich contrast of green meadows to wild forest scenery; the farm of Lancaut clasped in the arms of the winding river, backed by hanging wood and rock. The further horn of the crescent tapers off into a craggy informal mole, over which the eye passes to the second bay. This terminates in Chepstow Castle, the town, and rocks beyond; all mellowed down, by distance, into that fine hazy indistinctness which makes even deformities combine in harmony with the picture. In the middle distance, the widening sea spreads itself … Lastly, all this union of large and bold objects, from being comprised within a circumference of a very few miles, unites the landscape and the prospect …

(p. 47)

The painterly interest in foregrounds, middle distances, side-screens, contrasting colours and textures, ornamental objects, and the total composed effect can be readily observed and is sufficiently reminiscent of the Kingsley passage to suggest that he was working in the same mode. Again like Kingsley, Meredith then returned to the narrative of travel in order to modulate into her next descriptive piece:

Leaving the ‘Moss Cottage’, we drove on … Turning round under the northern point of ‘Black Cliff Wood’, the road begins to descend; and the post boy turns round with a touch of the hat, and a ‘First view of Tintern, ma'am!’.

(p. 48)

The first prospect in the description of Baroona (ll. 1-3) is that of an inhabited rural landscape with a scenic traveller on horseback in its foreground; the mode is verbal, the principle of static composition is visual, and that of dynamic composition is derived from scenic travel, so that the passage testifies immediately to the complex interplay between the various modes of landscape art. The subject matter may be compared with the illustrations in Joseph Lycett's Views in Australia, or New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land delineated with descriptive Letter Press (1824), especially “View of the Governor's Retreat” (a river, a cottage in park-like grounds, and aristocratic persons viewing distant mountains) and “Table Mountain” (a background of wild mountains, a middle distance of a sheltered rural valley with cottages in park-like grounds and, in the foreground, mounted scenic travellers).⁵ It is significant that Hamlyn notices the buildings in the landscape as the centre of visual interest. The art of landscape at this time was essentially the expression of an urban, neo-classical response to the natural world and its practitioners displayed a marked preference for wild nature modified by the visual manifestations of civilization. In his verbal description of “Ben Lomond”, Lycett writes “The landscape from hence, in almost every direction, is picturesque and beautiful; but it wants the introduction of habitable dwellings, to break the too-great sameness which prevails”. Similarly, Shepherd specifies that “the Mansion, Villa, or Cottage … should, if possible, be the principal object in the landscape” (p. 9). Furthermore, because the description is made by the scenic traveller himself, Geoffry Hamlyn, the reader experiences not the Australian wilderness as he or even Kingsley might see it, but an artificial vision imposed on the original setting in accordance with the principles of civilized taste of the 1820s and 1830s.

The second prospect (ll. 7-14) consists of Hamlyn in the foreground, a glen in the middle distance, and the homestead and mountains in the background. It is divided temporally from the first prospect by Hamlyn's reflections on the absence of water in the landscape and spatially by the distance he has travelled. It is interesting that his thoughts on water are completely a function of his role as a scenic traveller and have no relation at all to the romance tradition. Hamlyn's remarks on the absence of water indicate not only his own taste and education but, by implication, Kingsley's own detailed knowledge of the landscape tradition of the period he was recreating. Shepherd, for example, suggests that “Water is the most splendid object in pleasure grounds and park scenery, except trees … Pleasure grounds, without water, are very defective, as water adds so much to their beauty” (pp. 40-41). Similarly, in her Notes and Sketches of New South Wales (1844), L. A. Meredith thought the landscape of the Blue Mountains picturesque (that is, suitable as the subject of a painting) except for the lack of water:

The wild scenery and the zigzag road reminded me of some of the “passes of the Alps”, as drawn by Brockedon, save that our ravine had no foaming torrent roaring down it; and it was only by most intent observation that I could detect something like moisture trickling over the rocks.

(p. 64)

Even the suddenness of Hamlyn's perception of the glen and watercourse is a common response in the literature of scenic travel. Edmund Burke, in his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756), a work that was of seminal importance to theories on the art of landscape and available in the colony, specified that an essential component of the “sublime” experience is “A sudden beginning or a sudden cessation (either in sights or sounds) of any considerable force”.⁶ Significantly, Shepherd classed caves, glens, and similar geological structures under sublime landscape, especially when in combination with spectacular watercourses. Thus Mrs Meredith, like Hamlyn, frequently came suddenly upon such objects accompanied by sublime experiences: “Suddenly we found ourselves on the brink of a tremendous precipice … On our left hand, the bright waters of the mountain stream poured over the rocks in one smooth, glassy, unbroken torrent” (p. 122).

The second prospect as a whole is perfectly composed and Hamlyn pauses to appreciate it (ll. 11ff). As in Lycett's inhabited landscapes, the buildings are in the middle distance of the picture on an intermediate elevation; the mountains form a background of higher elevation while the mounted scenic traveller views the whole from the foreground. As Shepherd explains, this placing of the dwellings on an intermediate elevation is necessary to gain the best view of them from a distance, and to gain the best views of the pleasure grounds from them:

Mr. Repton never gave the preference to a very high elevation, for the site of a mansion, but preferred a wide open valley, between two hills or high land, upon a gentle swell, with a base of larger dimensions. Here, on each side of the valley, the high grounds or hills had a much better effect, by viewing their ascents, as every object placed upon them would be above the level of the eye, and would be seen to much better advantage than if the mansion were built upon the top of a hill, where objects would be viewed by looking down upon them.

(pp. 24-25)

The view from the house is equally important: “Every possible advantage should be taken in a park or pleasure ground to make openings through the wood to obtain a view of the scenery of the surrounding country” (p. 43). Kingsley makes exactly the same use as Lycett and many other landscape artists of an object in the landscape in order to compose this “scenery of the surrounding country”: composition is achieved through the curving of the river—“Smooth streams in the landscape’ are also one of Burke's major examples in his discussion of Hogarth's line of beauty (p. 55).

The third prospect (ll.22-31) is again divided both temporally and spatially from the previous one by Hamlyn's movements and his reflections on visual landscape appreciation. It consists of a cascade pouring through columns of basalt which resemble “the pillars of a ruined city” or “fantastic buildings”. As noticed above in connection with the glen, cascades such as the one described by Mrs Meredith are important objects in sublime and picturesque landscapes. Lycett, for example, describes a typically sublime experience in the letter press to “Beckett's Falls”:

No pen can possibly render justice to the scenes which present themselves to view, in looking down this glen. The powers even of the pencil are far too feeble to convey a correct idea of the magnificent, the awful grandeur of the wild scenery which the sublime hand of nature has produced on this truly romantic spot … the tremendous roar of the Fall completely deafens the Spectator who is near it, and is distinctly heard at a vast distance from the cataract …

The spectator's sense of his own insignificance, his awe and terror are, for Burke, essential to the sublime experience (pp. 38, 40). So important is the cascade that Shepherd recommends

Rivers and rills want no creation but they may frequently be much improved by art … Picturesque additions for the embellishment of rivers and rills will naturally suggest themselves to the artist. Cascades and waterfalls may frequently be created where natural brooks or rills come near the scene of improvement, and they add greatly to the picturesque scene.

(p. 76)

The columns of basalt, too, are conventional decorations, for Gothic architecture, and geological structures resembling it, are an important part of the sublime or picturesque landscape. Examples are Lycett's illustrations of “The Wingee Carribee” and “Beckett's Falls”, the various artists represented in plates 16-20 of Bernard Smith's European Vision and the South Pacific, and Mrs Meredith's description of Hassan's Walls in Notes and Sketches of New South Wales:

These walls or cliffs … broken and fissured in various fantastic forms, exactly resemble a ruined castle … Had I been travelling in an old country, I should at once have decided that these were truly the ruins of some mighty mountain-fortress of former days.

(p. 79)

It is important to remember, however, that the art of landscape was still an essentially neo-classical art and the preference for civilization is always felt, so that such sublime objects and experiences are only enjoyed in the context of a pleasure ground or scenic excursion. Lycett's plates occur in the context of others showing inhabited landscapes and have the air of an excursion. Mrs Meredith, too, is on such an excursion. Similarly, the cascade observed by Hamlyn is set within what is explicitly the pleasure park of the Buckley estate, and the homestead is always in view. Fear and discomfort are quite common reactions to real wilderness when the park-like appearance of the Australian bush is seen to be deceptive: in Chapter XXX of Geoffry Hamlyn, for example, which tells of the death of a boy lost in the bush, “the beautiful rock-walled paradise” becomes “the treacherous beautiful forest which had lured him to his destruction” (pp. 283ff.).

The final prospect (ll.32-39) contains the house and its pleasure ground. Significantly, the spacious, park-like grounds immediately surrounding the house blend gradually into the dense woodland at a distance for, as Shepherd noted, the purpose of the pleasure park is to make the house appear to be gradually connected with, or “embosomed” within the surrounding forest. Both Buckley and, through his keen observation, Hamlyn, display tasteful, up-to-date awareness of landscape art for Shepherd was concerned to point out to his colonial audience that “in place of cutting down our splendid forests, right forward without distinction, we have only to thin out, and tastefully arrange and dispose them, to produce the most pleasing effect” (p. 2). Hamlyn's final comment—“What a lovely place they will make of this in time!”—indicates that the right “effect” has been made upon a mind capable of appreciating it according to traditional principles:

… the delight and admiration with which noblemen's seats and genteel residences are viewed by strangers and foreigners adds greatly to the respect they pay to our Country and its institutions. (p. 3) Display is one great object in all countries; and perhaps in nothing is this so manifest, as in the general desire to possess fine mansions. This is one of the chief channels by which wealth attempts to secure distinction, comfort and pleasure.

(p. 63).

The type of landscape art evident in the description of Baroona is representative of the neo-classical tradition. By the 1820s and 1830s, however, a second tradition within the art of landscape had become of equal importance. It derived from the developing disciplines of natural history and empirical observation to produce a type of landscape that is “typical” rather than “ideal”. The purpose of “typical” landscape art is to describe the representative natural productions and features of a region which make it distinct from all other regions. The empirical tradition is represented in Geoffry Hamlyn by Dr Mulhaus's interests in natural history. Horner's classification of the novel as a romance has, unfortunately, caused him completely to miss this point about the Doctor: “It is difficult to understand why Kingsley allowed himself the indulgence of the passages of natural history from the erudite Dr Mulhaus—passages which are a structural defect in the work” (p. 9). If the novel is to be considered as a romance, then it is possibly true that these passages are irrelevant and even tedious; if, however, it is to be seen as a social history, then no survey of the period would be nearly adequate without considerable attention to the art of landscape in both its neo-classical and empirical traditions. If the landscape art of the period is any evidence, the interests of the Doctor represent those of the majority of the educated colonial classes. There is much in the character of Doctor Mulhaus to suggest that he was modelled upon the botanist, the Baron Sir Ferdinand J. H. von Mueller. Mueller was appointed director of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens in 1857 and it is likely that Kingsley knew him either personally or by reputation; apart from their common botanical interests, Mueller, like the Doctor, made early discoveries of gold, and travelled through much of the area in which the novel is set.

The passage in the novel which indicates most purely the empirical tradition is that in which the Doctor and Hamlyn ride north in search of cattle:

Good Doctor! How he beguiled the way with his learning … At first the stockmen rode behind, talking about beasts, and horses … But soon I noticed they would draw up closer, and regard the Doctor with some sort of attention, till towards evening … Dick asked the Doctor a question, as to why … certain trees should grow in certain localities, and there only. The Doctor reined up alongside him directly, and in plain forcible language explained the matter … “Trees cannot move; but by time, and by positively refusing to grow on unkindly soils, they arrange themselves in the localities which suit them best” … So we fared on … Northward ever, through forest and plain over mountain and swamp, across sandstone, limestone, granite, and rich volcanic land, each marked distinctly by a varying vegetation.

Initially, the lower classes are either hesitant or unable to participate in the appreciation of natural history, suggesting that the art of landscape was more the prerogative of the educated classes. The “plain forcible language” used by the Doctor suggests the plain, objective style of prose encouraged by the Royal Society. Both the Doctor and, under his guidance, Hamlyn, attempt to describe the regions through which they travel in the manner of typical landscape: the representative features and products are described and then the relations between each category of natural history are perceived—for example the relationship between botany and geology.

During the period of which Kingsley was writing, however, the neo-classical and empirical traditions did not remain separate. Instead, a new and more comprehensive art of landscape grew out of the merging of these two traditions to become one of the most complete expressions of the interests and sensibility of the colonial educated class. Bernard Smith has considered this phenomenon in the visual landscape art of the period in European Vision and the South Pacific, where he indicates that the travelling artist had to attend to the demands of both traditions in his treatment of a landscape: to attend to the aesthetic qualities of a subject—whether the landscape is beautiful, sublime, or picturesque—and to attend to the unique character of the region as determined by its climate, botany, geology, and people: “In scenic travellers in Australia it is often difficult to distinguish between the aesthetic and scientific interests” (p. 225). The result in the verbal art of landscape was a new, sophisticated form of often great artistic merit, usually displaying far more taste and education than the prose fiction of the period. Mrs Meredith's Notes and Sketches Of New South Wales, for example, possesses the basic narrative structure of a scenic traveller's journal but exploits it as a showcase for various descriptions of natural productions in the empirical style, and pieces of verbal scene-painting. Similarly, the chapters of Barron Field's Geographical Memoirs of New South Wales (1825) written by himself reveal him as a virtuoso, skilled in both the art of scenic travel and in “typical” landscape description. John Lhotsky's A Journey from Sydney to the Australian Alps (1835) provides representative examples from this period of an apparent disjunction between the habit of viewing the landscape as a composed picture on the one hand, and the habit of classifying the components according to the various disciplines of natural history on the other:

The waters of the little ponds near which I had camped for the night, were smoking in the early matin hour when I rose, and the stream was slightly propelled by an Easterly breeze, but this lasted only for a short time. We started … and proceeded silently through a serene fresh air, surrounded by the beautiful forest land of the Argyle. After a few miles, we passed a number of fine large ponds, around which the forest was more dense, the dark shadow of which reposed like a mystic dream, upon the surface of these quiet and limpid waters … the rock near this place is a Puddingstone, with large white silex … The surrounding flats and small ponds were rich in interesting plants. One of my men brought me several of the large spikes of a bulrush, which much resembled the Typhaangustifolia, but the leaves are rather glaucous.

(pp. 26-27)

This passage demonstrates Lhotsky's ability to move from a setpiece in the scenic mode to a discourse on natural history. Although his use of scientific terminology may seem, to the modern reader, too erudite to be representative of colonial taste, the very high frequency of this level of reference in popular travel books suggests an easy familiarity on the part of the contemporary reader. The disjunction of styles, however, is apparent rather than real: it indicates the synthesis of the two traditions to form a new mode in the art of landscape capable of expressing the complicated emotional and intellectual preoccupations of an educated colonial gentleman. Perhaps the two traditions are not so different after all, for each is an attempt to impose a set of human concepts on a natural scene.

It is this new, comprehensive landscape mode which is manifest in the several scenic excursions that take place in Geoffry Hamlyn. Horner has indicated the symbolic significance of the excursion to Cape Chatham as a part of the courtship of Sam and Alice. If, however, a detailed examination of this episode reveals that Kingsley has again faithfully reproduced the conventions of the art of landscape—that is, beyond the demands of romance—there would seem to be further evidence that he was concerned to record the representative activities and interests of the period. Such fidelity would be tedious in romance.

It was a glorious crystal clear day in autumn; all nature, aroused from her summer's rest, had put off her suit of hodden grey, and was flaunting in gaudiest green. The atmosphere was so amazingly pure, that miles away across the plains the travellers could distinguish the herds of turkeys (bustards) stalking to and fro, while before them, that noble maritime mountain Cape Chatham towered up, sharply defined above the gleaming haze which marked the distant sea.

For a time their way lay straight across the broad well-grassed plains, marked with ripples as though the retiring sea had just left it. Then a green swamp; through the tall reeds the native companion, king of cranes, waded majestic; the brilliant porphyry water hen, with scarlet bill and legs, flashed like a sapphire among the emerald-green water sedge. A shallow lake, dotted with wild ducks, here and there a group of wild swan, black with red bills, floating calmly on its bosom.—A long stretch of grass as smooth as a bowling-green.—A sudden rocky rise, clothed with native cypress (Exocarpus—O my botanical readers!), honeysuckle (Banksia), she-oak (Casuarina), and here and there a stunted gum. Cape Chatham began to show grander and nearer, topping all; and soon they saw the broad belt of brown sandy heath that lay along the shore.

“Here,” said the Doctor, “… Immediately you shall see how we pass from the richly-grassed volcanic plains, into the barren sandstone heaths; from a productive pasture-land into a useless flowergarden. Nature here is economical, as she always is: she makes her choicest ornamental efforts on spots otherwise useless. You will see a greater variety of vegetation on one acre of your sandy heath than on two square miles of the thickly-grassed country we have been passing over.”

It was as he said. They came soon on to the heath; a dark dreary expanse, dull to look upon after so long a journey upon the bright green grass. It stretched away right and left interminably, only broken here and there with islands of dull-coloured trees; as melancholy a piece of country as one could conceive: yet far more thickly peopled with animal, as well as vegetable life, than the rich pastoral downs further inland. Now they began to see the little red brush kangaroo, and the grey forester, skipping away in all directions; and had it been summer they would have been startled more than once by the brown snake, and the copper snake, deadliest of their tribe. The painted quail (the largest of Australian game birds, I believe), whirred away from beneath their horses' feet; and the ground parrot, green with mottlings of gold and black, rose like partridge from the heather, and flew low. Here, too, the Doctor flushed a “White's thrush”, close to an outlying belt of forest, and got into a great state of excitement about it. “The only known bird”, he said, “which is found in Europe, America, and Australia alike”. Then he pointed out the emu wren, a little tiny brown fellow, with long hairy tail-feathers, flitting from bush to bush; and then, leaving ornithology, he called their attention to the wonderful variety of low vegetation that they were riding through; Hakeas, Acacias, Grevilleas, and what not. In spring this brown heath would have been a brilliant mass of flowers; but now, nothing was to be seen save a few tall crimson spikes of Epacris, and here and there a bunch of lemon-coloured Correas. Altogether, he kept them so well amused, that they were astonished to come so quickly upon the station, placed in a snug cove of the forest, where it bordered on the heath beside a sluggish creek. Then, seeing the mountain towering up close to them, and hearing, as they stayed at the door, a low continuous thunder behind a high roll in the heath which lay before them, they knew that the old ocean was close at hand, and that their journey was done.

The people at the station were very glad to see them … Barker … was an old friend … and they found so much to talk about, that after a heavy midday meal, excellent in kind … and certain libations of pale ale and cold claret-and-water … the young people (and Dr. Mulhaus) started forth to the Cape …

There was such a rise in the ground seawards, that the broad ocean was invisible till they were half-way up the grassy down. Then right and left they began to see the nether firmament, stretching away infinitely. But the happy lovers paused not till they stood upon the loftiest breezy knoll …

A cloudless sky and a sailless sea. Far beneath them they heard but saw not the eternal surges gnawing at the mountain. A few white albatrosses skimmed and sailed below, and before, seaward, the sheets of turf, falling away, stretched into a shoreless headland …

She stood there flushed and excited with the exercise … the most beautiful object in that glorious landscape … Awe, wonder, and admiration kept both of them silent for a few moments, and then she spoke.

“Do you know any of the choruses in the Messiah?” asked she … “because this is so very like some of them.”

“I can quite imagine that,” said Sam. “I can quite imagine music which expresses what we see now. Something infinitely broad I should say …”

… “There is the most dangerous ground-swell in the world off this coast” (said the Doctor) …

Halbert remarked, “This granite coast is hardly so remarkable as our Cornish one …”

“Earthquakes, of which you have none in Cornwall,” said the Doctor, “will just account for the difference …”

They wandered on … the Doctor called out:

“Here is something in your Cornish style, Halbert.”

A thin wall of granite, like a vast buttress, ran into the sea, pierced by a great arch, some sixty feet high.

(pp. 325-331)

Horner has suggested that “the summer storm which burst upon Cape Chatham” symbolizes the disruption of Sam's and Alice's engagement by the activities of the bushrangers. However, the episode contains more material than is necessary to this type of romantic characterization and symbolism. A setting which suits Horner's approach more neatly is the gothic moor that forms a backdrop to the nefarious schemes of George Hawker and William Lee at the opening of the novel. This scene is a functional symbol; as a landscape it is a mere sketch in which atmosphere is achieved through the use of melodramatic adjectives. The excursion to Cape Chatham cannot be satisfactorily explained in this way. It is a piece of writing of a different order, a sample of a landscape art of a different species and intention from that normally found in romance. Hamlyn, for example, takes obvious delight in his almost endless elaboration of scenic, botanical, zoological, geological and ornithological details. The modern reader may have little taste for this material; the reader of romance will find it intolerable. This lack of immediate sympathy, indeed this failure to recognize the true genre, is probably symptomatic of a general critical failure to understand the landscape art of the colonial period, at least in its literary manifestations. Once the genre is recognized an attempt must be made to appreciate the landscape art of the period, to read it as it was meant to be read, to place it again in the milieu which it so richly draws upon.

The episode as a whole displays the now familiar structure of landscape art: it is a scenic excursion consisting of a sequence of individually composed prospects. A mounted party of scenic travellers occupies the foreground of each prospect and their movements through the landscape create a sequential structure. The first prospect (ll.1-8) contains the travellers, plains in the middle distance, and Cape Chatham forming a neat frame in the background. The herds of turkeys on the plains are not, however, merely picturesque ornaments in a setting composed according to neo-classical principles: they also represent an attempt by Hamlyn to illustrate the typical wildlife of the area in its natural setting; the “gleaming haze” also suggests an attempt at scientific precision in the description of the setting, for the accurate representation of light was a problem which occupied “typical” landscape painters who had been influenced by von Humboldt (see Bernard Smith's Australian Painting, 1971, p. 7). The style exemplified by this prospect—a synthesis of the neo-classical and empirical traditions—is similar to that of White's Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales (1790) in which a narrative of a scenic excursion on the harbour is used to provide a sequence of settings for ornithological plates and descriptions.

The second prospect (ll.9-21) is divided temporally and spatially from the first by the movement of the travellers, who again occupy the foreground. The middle distance consists of a number of lakes, swamps, and grass areas teaming with wildlife and the scene is framed by another view of the Cape in the distance. The heterogeneous vocabulary used in the description of this setting is typical of the way in which landscape artists of the period could, at the same time, “paint” a scene in the most self-consciously poetic manner and incorporate the terminology of scientific classification for the benefit of “my botanical readers”. Mrs Meredith, for example, was able to attend to the most precise botanical observations while on a scenic excursion which she described with equal attention to pictorial composition, the poetic potential of sublime embellishments of the Sydney coastal area, and such characteristic subjective sensations as that of “suddenness”:

Great green mat-like plants of the pretty Mesembryanthemum aequilaterale, or fig-marigold, adorned the hot sandy banks of the road-side. It bears a bright purple flower, and a five-sided fruit … A very prickly species of solanum also grew here … As we approached the summit, the hollow formed by the road was suddenly filled by a background … of deep blue water; it was the open sea that gradually rose before us, seen over the rocks, and spreading out bright and blue, with small waves sparkling in the fervid sunshine, and the white diamond-crested spray dashing high against the ironbound coast, here broken into a low craggy amphitheatre.

(pp. 45-46)

Similarly, Hamlyn indulges in the colours and textures of the typical wildfowl of the area, experiences the “sudden rocky rise”, lists the scientific names of the vegetation, and is able to present the whole as a conventionally composed picture.

The second and third prospects are punctuated by the efforts of the Doctor to explain the relations between the various animate and inanimate components of the region (ll.22-29). This concern to understand the uniqueness of each region is an important preoccupation of artists depicting “typical” landscape. Barron Field, for example, in his “Journal of an excursion to the Five Islands and Shoal Haven, on the coast of New South Wales” (Ch. III of Geographical Memoirs) was attentive to the pictorial nature of his descriptions and the methods of narrating a scenic excursion, but was careful to include “typical” natural features of the region, such as climate and vegetation, and observe their interaction:

The view was so picturesque—the lake, the hills, and the Indians, “the spirit of them all”,—as to deserve a painter …

Here may be seen, for the first time in this colony, the cabbage palm (corpyha australis) towering above all the trees of the forest, to the height sometimes of 100 feet … These rare productions of the vegetable kingdom are, in all other countries, strictly tropical; and these “weeds of glorious feature” have no business beyond the latitude of 23[frac12] degrees from the equator, and yet here they are in 34[frac12] degrees.

(pp. 465, 460-461)

The third prospect (ll.30-54) again contains a wealth of description of the natural productions of the region. Hamlyn here employs a technique that is quite common in landscape art. The narrator departs from the immediate restrictions of a specific tour in order to describe the kinds of natural productions typical of the region at other times of the day, at other seasons, or which he has encountered on other excursions. Thus Hamlyn lists the kinds of snakes that might be seen “had it been summer”, and suggests that in spring there are many more flowers to be seen than at present. This departure from the immediate excursion can be observed in George Bennet's essay “On the Habits of the Water-Mole”, in which he uses a picturesque setting to describe the behaviour of the platypus (The Month, July 1857).

The fourth prospect (ll.55-66) recalls the earlier description of Baroona. It consists of a homestead nestled in the forest beside a watercourse with the travellers in the foreground and the mountain towering up as a frame at the back of the scene. Although this seems to be a return to the more purely neo-classical style, it should be noted that this is simply one prospect in a sequence which, as a whole, draws upon the full range of the art of landscape. This image of an inhabited rural landscape underlines once more the essentially urban and neo-classical sensibility of which the art of landscape is an expression. As in Lachlan Macquarie's Journals of his Tours in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, 1810-22 and Lycett's Views in Australia, all scenic excursions take place either in the pleasure grounds of an estate, or proceed from one estate to the other; at the end of each short stage there awaits this image of civilization embosomed in the landscape, and usually, a good meal to refresh the tired travellers. It is interesting that the theme of civilization should be reasserted after a long passage of description of the journey and just prior to the sublime experiences that are about to take place on the coast: the homestead is an essential stage in the excursion, symbolizing that the world of man is never far away.

The fifth prospect (ll.67-94) is a seascape containing the conventional elements of a sublime landscape. Other examples of this convention are Lycett's “Wooloomooloo”, Mrs Meredith's excursion to the South Head (in Notes and Sketches), Frank Fowler's piece on “Bondi” (No. II of the series “Sydney and its Suburbs” published in The Month), and Charles Harpur's poem “A Coast View”. The experiences of Sam and Alice are those which Burke defined as sublime: they come suddenly upon the sea and experience its infinite size and power, and the image of the “eternal surges gnawing at the mountain” provokes a religious experience of the insignificance of man in relation to nature. The granite structures noticed by Halbert and the Doctor are common sublime ornaments, as noticed in the setting of Baroona. It should be stressed, however, that the image of the homestead and the nature of the excursion itself modify these experiences to such an extent that the sea is almost made a part of a gentleman's estate and the sublime sensations are indulged in only during the holiday atmosphere of a properly conducted scenic excursion.

It has been the intention of the foregoing analyses to demonstrate that Kingsley's most characteristic landscape motifs—inhabited rural landscapes and scenic excursions—derive from the art of landscape as it had developed in Australia during the 1820s and 1830s. The conventions and theories of landscape art determine the use made of individual details of description, the sequence in which they occur, and even the psychological responses of Hamlyn himself. If the novel is to be considered only in relation to the romance tradition, the details and procedure of these descriptions are all but irrelevant. Because of the importance of the art of landscape in colonial Australia, Kingsley's fidelity to the tradition raises important implications about the generic qualities and intentions of the novel. It is not, as Horner suggested, simply a romance, but an historical novel which is also a faithful and sympathetic social document. Above all, most of what is to be learned about the society of the 1820s and 1830s is to be gleaned from Kingsley's exploitation of the themes, associations, and implications of the art of landscape itself. These themes may be classified under three major headings: wealth, civilization, and England.

G. A. Wilkes has described the particular class of colonial society which Kingsley has taken as his subject: “Geoffry Hamlyn is a novel about the gentry, about those who by birth and training constituted a ruling class”; he continues by observing that “Besides learning to ride and shoot, young Sam Buckley is taught Euclid and Latin grammar, and is instructed in swordplay by his father and in fencing by Dr. Mulhaus” (p. 65). One might add “the art of landscape” to the other aspects of genteel education, for it is taken as understood that the characters in the novel who lay out and appreciate the homestead settings are tastefully informed in this tradition. On the evening before one of the scenic excursions that take place in the novel—that to the Limestone Gates—Hamlyn outlines the access which his circle had to the literature of the art of landscape: Captain Brentwood enjoyed a “scientific voyage”; Alice “brought out a great book of coloured prints”:

One never sees such books as that nowadays, somehow; people, I fancy, would not pay that price for them. What modern travels have such plates as the old editions of Cook's Voyages? The number of illustrated books is increased tenfold, but they are hardly improved in quality.

(p. 255)

Hamlyn, writing his recollections after the goldrush and the great increase of population associated with it, is speaking retrospectively and historically about the 1820s and 1830s. During the period in which the novel is set, the literature of the art of landscape was expensive and of high quality, produced for an upper class and usually English market. Anyone who has examined Lycett's Views and appreciated the amount of work involved in such a production will sympathize with Hamlyn's assessment of this period. Thereafter, however, migrants to Australia were generally of a lower social class and their interests more practical, so that travel literature “became less expensive, less sumptuous, and less well produced” (Smith, European Vision, p. 177). Hamlyn's use of the word “people”, his observation that they will pay less, and his nostalgia for the earlier period all testify to an implicit belief that a tasteful appreciation of the art of landscape was the prerogative of the colonial gentry: they were the class with the taste, the education, and the wealth to display those qualities. Thus Kingsley's fidelity to the art of landscape is not simply a manifestation of his historical accuracy, but an essential part of the characterization of the gentry. The novel is not just a romance about the gentry who happen to be educated in the art of landscape: the art of landscape itself is a central concept indicating that they are in fact the upper class of colonial society, and that they are people of wealth, taste, and education. By describing his expected audience, Thomas Shepherd made clear from the outset of his lectures this strong social connotation of the art of landscape:

Landscape Gardening … must be of vast importance to this Colony, in raising the capabilities of New South Wales in the estimation of the present Land Proprietors, and more particularly in the estimation of gentlemen of taste and fortune who, residing in other countries, might be induced to come here if they could purchase improved estates.

(p. 1)

Sublime, picturesque, and beautiful park scenery … adorns the parks of our Kings, our Nobility, and our Gentry, in Britain.

Young Australians may some of you at no distant day spread open the wings of your ambition.

(p. 28)

Apart from this general association of landscape gardening with persons of wealth and taste, the similarities between Buckley's situation and those of Shepherd's audience indicate Kingsley's attention to historical accuracy:

Many respectable persons who came here … are now in possession of large estates, and enjoy many thousands of pounds … Is this not a sufficient reason for gentlemen in Britain … who may be possessed of small capitals scarcely sufficient to support their rank to come here …

(p. 33)

Twenty years ago, society was very defective for gentlemen of fortune, but this is not the case at present; gentlemen of the first respectability are now settled here, residing constantly on their estates. Many settlers are men of first rate attainments and abilities, and branches of good families in … England. We have now many officers of the Army and Navy resident among us.

(p. 55)

As Shepherd understood, it was especially the moneyed classes that identified with the arts of landscape, including landscape gardening, as an expression of their status:

Display is the one great object in all countries; and perhaps in nothing is this so manifest, as in the general desire to possess fine mansions. This is one of the chief channels by which wealth attempts to secure distinction, comfort, and pleasure.

(p. 63)

One of the first images presented in the Australian section of Geoffry Hamlyn is that of the “English microcosm” transported to the new world:

We sat and watched them debouch from the forest into the broad river meadows in the gathering gloom: saw the scene so venerable and ancient, so seldom seen in the Old World—the patriarchs moving into the desert with all their wealth, to find a new pasture ground. A simple primitive action, the first and simplest act of colonisation, yet producing such great results on the history of the world as did the parting of Lot and Abraham.

(p. 151)

This motif of the coming of “civilization” to the “wilderness” or “desert” is deeply rooted in colonial art, including the art of landscape, and expresses an important feature of the sensibilities of Kingsley's characters. It testifies to a general and essentially neo-classical preference for the arts and industry of man above the wildness of nature, a preference for urban, or at least civilized rural life above rusticity, a preference for order above disorder. Thus Lycett writes in the Advertisement to his Views in Australia: “We behold the gloomy grandeur of solitary woods and forests exchanged for the noise and bustle of thronged marts of commerce; while the dens of savage animals, and the hiding places of yet more savage men, have become transformed into peaceful villages or cheerful towns”. Similarly in his Australasia (appearing first in 1819 but revised and republished during the 1820s), W. C. Wentworth writes:

What a cheering prospect for the philanthropist to behold what is now one vast and mournful wilderness, becoming the smiling seat of industry and the social arts; to see its hills and dales covered with bleating flocks, lowing herds, and waving corn; to hear the joyful notes of the shepherd, and the enlivening cries of the husbandman, instead of the appalling yell of the savage … and to witness a country which nature seems to have designed as her master-piece at length fulfilling the gracious intentions of its all-bountious Author, by administering to the wants and contributing to the happiness of millions.

(pp. 88-89)

Given this neo-classical preference for the world of man above the pristine world of nature, it is the art of landscape which provides the means by which nature can be transformed into an acceptable state. Occasionally in Australia, this simply involved breaking the monotony of the cover of the bush. It is this monotony which James Dixon described in his Voyage to New South Wales (1822):

On landing, there will not be seen those fine fertile plains, filled with villages, farm houses, and other delightful picturesque scenes, which, in suitable seasons, the mother country presents; he will view a mountainous, hilly country, covered apparently with immense large trees and brush wood, conveying no ideas, but what an immense country of forests gives to the mind.

(pp. 91-92)

More often, however, the art of landscape provided a means of taming the wildness of nature, of making it appear more civilized: nature becomes tolerable when it can be appreciated on a scenic excursion, when it can be classified according to the categories of sublime, beautiful, and picturesque, or when it can be seen to be a part of the pleasure grounds of a gentleman's estate. Lycett, for example, was able to appreciate wild scenery, but he was always able to classify it according to civilized aesthetic theory, or to include it in a pleasure ground or scenic excursion. Governor Macquarie was able to appreciate the wildness of the Nepean River system, but did so on a “water excursion” using Dr Jamison's famous estate of Regentville as a base to leave from and return to each day (as recorded in the Journals of his tours). W. C. Wentworth seemed uneasy in the bush surrounding the city of Sydney, and was only able to describe and appreciate it according to the rules of visual composition. Thomas Shepherd spoke openly of the need to “improve” nature before it could be comfortably appreciated by men of culture and taste:

By the art, skill, and taste of the Landscape Gardener, a more sublime, picturesque, or beautiful scene, and state of things, is formed, than nature could present, if left entirely to her own exuberance or sterility. He improves upon nature, by directing her powers, and renders generally agreeable to the sight of the beholders such objects as might, without his skill of arrangement, be contemplated with indifference or aversion.

(p. 7)

The art of landscape performs this same function in Geoffry Hamlyn: the motif of the influence of civilization coming to the wilderness is stated at the opening of the Australian section of the novel, and then made manifest through such scenes as the settings of Baroona and Garoopna, scenes which draw deeply upon the art of landscape and render a representative vision of nature improved by the arts and industry of man. Because the landscape settings of Geoffry Hamlyn depict nature in its “improved” or civilized form, they are pervaded with a sense of the neo-classical emphasis on the world of human industry and cultivated taste. The most extreme form of nature “improved” is the garden, one of the purest images of English civilization in the wilderness. Sir Thomas Mitchell, for example, described the garden of Macarthur at Parramatta in his Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia (1838):

The garden, to him who seeks a home in distant colonies, must ever be an object of peculiar interest; for there, while cultivating the trees, fruits, and flowers of his native land, the recollection of early days, and the country of his birth are awakened by the vivid colours of the simple flower which his industry has reared and which he knows to be a native of the soil to which he himself owes his existence.

(pp. 6-7)

The garden of Garoopna is one such emblem of English civilization:

What a delicious veranda is this to dream in! Through the tangled passion-flowers, jessamines, and magnolias, what a soft gleam of bright hazy distance, over the plains and far away! The deep river-glen cleaves the tableland, which, here and there, swells into breezy downs. Beyond, miles away to the north, is a great forest barrier, above which there is a blaze of late snow, sending strange light aloft into the burning haze. All this is seen through an arch in the dark mass of verdure which clothes the trellis-work, only broken through in this one place, as though to make a frame for the picture. [Sam] leans back, and gives himself up to watching trifles.

(p. 244)

The setting fulfils all of the criteria demanded by the art of landscape: the pleasure grounds, with their sublime and picturesque objects, can be readily viewed from the mansion; all is composed as in a picture. The Australian landscape has been transformed into an acceptable setting for a civilized young gentleman to read Boswell's Johnson. The vision facilitated by the art of landscape is a civilizing vision which transforms the raw material of nature into a form shaped by the presence of cultivated humanity. The setting is not just an extension of the romance plot—at this point, the love between Sam and Alice—but a typical expression of the sensibility of the colonial period, and particularly the neo-classical taste of the class which Kingsley has taken as his subject.

Implicit in the ideal of civilization figured forth by the art of landscape is a feeling that the particular civilization which the characters aspire to is that of England. Because of the faithfully traditional nature of Kingsley's landscape settings, they are not merely an adjunct to, but a major expression of the aspiration to an English way of life. Shepherd, for example, makes clear the connection between the art of landscape and the tasteful way of life of the English gentry:

I believe, it is generally acknowledged by Landscape Gardeners, Landscape Painters, and Pastoral Poets, as well as by Architects and Men of Science, who have travelled through the best improved Countries in the world, that no Country equals Britain, in the present admirable style of Landscape Gardening, or for the richness and splendour, and also for the infinite variety of pleasing and interesting objects in landscape scenery. England and Scotland have, therefore, the pre-eminence above all other Countries, in the embellishment and general improvement of land estates. This pre-eminence has been chiefly owing to the immense wealth of the landed proprietors of Britain, to the high state of civilisation in England and Scotland, and also to the great encouragement which our Kings, nobles, and gentlemen have given to landscape Gardeners of superior taste and ability in this peculiar and delightful art.

(p. 3)

Similarly, J. E. Bicheno's lecture “The Philosophy of Botany”, in Lectures Delivered at the Mechanic's Institute, Hobart Town (1849) is full of praise for English excellence in the art of landscape: “… there is no country among modern nations in which the inhabitants have manifested or displayed a greater love for the beauties of nature than the English … The French have it not; they neither talk of it, write of it, nor travel for it” (p. 9). The vision of landscape achieved in Geoffry Hamlyn symbolizes not simply the coming of civilization to the wilderness, but the coming of English civilization, and the symbol—the art of landscape—is, historically, a major part of that civilization. It is this desire to emulate English life and not the demands of romance plot which is responsible for the landscape settings and, ultimately, the return of Sam and Hamlyn to England at the end of the novel. When Kingsley describes the Buckley seat of Clere, the reader comes to realize more fully the cultural and social motivations behind the fundamental qualities of the Australian landscape descriptions. Garoopna and Baroona are imitations of Clere, or the ideals that it represents: they too are designed and appreciated according to the theories of the art of landscape, but Clere excels them in quality and purity:

I saw, across a deep valley on our right, a line of novel heights, well timbered, but broken into open grassy glades, and smooth sheets of bright green lawn. Between us and these hills flowed a gleaming river, from which a broad avenue led up to the eye of the picture, a noble grey stone mansion, a mass of turrets, gables, and chimneys, which the afternoon sun was lighting up right pleasantly.

“That is the finest seat I have seen yet, Sam,” I said …

Swiftly up under the shadow of the elm avenue, past the herds of dappled dear, up to the broad, gravelled terrace which ran along in front of the brave old house …

I had plenty of society, the best in the land … as the county had rallied round Sam with acclamation, I saw and enjoyed to the fullest extent that charming English country life, the like of which, I take it, no other country can show.

(pp. 472-473)

The scene may be compared with Garoopna and Baroona, and the tradition to which all belong. In the foreground are scenic travellers—Sam and Hamlyn—now in a coach instead of on horseback; the pleasure ground is a gentleman's park like those in Australia but consisting of English trees; in the grounds are the usual animals which grace picturesque landscapes in English art instead of the cattle and Australian creatures; again the stream composes the “picture”; the mansion is now in the Gothic style which Shepherd specifies and which Mrs Meredith and others imagined nostalgically in the Australian landscape; Hamlyn is again appropriately impressed by the display of taste and wealth; and finally the social context is set. It is this image of English life and culture which pervades the Australian settings, governs a large section or movement of the plot, and renders the novel a profound and sympathetic social document, for Kingsley has successfully created, or recreated, a major tradition of Australian art and culture during the 1820s and 1830s.

Notes

1. See Australian Literary Studies, I (1963), 3-15.

2. In W. S. Ramson (ed.), The Australian Experience (1974), pp. 61-72.

3. Thomas Shepherd's Lectures on Landscape Gardening was published posthumously in Sydney in 1836. His first lecture is an eloquent essay on the interaction of the various modes of landscape art; his second describes his sound British training in his discipline. Hereafter, his work is taken as a standard reference point on colonial knowledge of landscape art.

4. The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn, Australian Classics (1970), pp. 162-163. All subsequent page-references to Geoffry Hamlyn are to this edition.

5. The pages of Lycett's Views are unnumbered. All subsequent references are to titles of relevant plates and descriptions.

6. Complete Works (1842), i.46. All subsequent page-references are to this edition.