"No, indeed it will not, dear Cola! It is a beautiful picture," whispered the gentle, encouraging voice of Archy, who had come direct from Bread Street hither. "And now, do have some dinner, or, what will be better for you, some tea."
"No, no; I can't eat: we shall lose the time: the Academy will be shut. Seppi, I must have a cab, and go there at once."
'Archibald saw resistance would have been vain and cruel, so he quietly suffered his friend to step into the cab, and followed him. All the long ride to Trafalgar Square Cola did not utter a single word, but sat motionless, with his picture in his arms. M'Kaye offered to hold it; but the other rejected his aid with a slight motion of the head. At last Cola relinquished this darling first-fruits of his genius with a look something like that of a mother parting from a beloved child, and then sank fainting into his friend's arms. That night Cola Monti was in a brain fever.' The picture was successful, and the boy-caricaturist grew at the same time to be an artist and a man.
Although Cola Monti, artistically speaking, is an imperfect story, it possesses both power and promise of no ordinary kind. The power is evident in the book itself: the promise rests upon the fact, that the author is a young lady now struggling, by her own unaided genius, through the stony and thorny paths of the literary profession. But we would not have her rely upon genius alone, or consider 'Cola Monti' as anything more than a promise or a pledge. It is like a gleam of light disclosing partially, and for a moment, a scene which in some measure owes its beauty and value to the mind of the beholder. It is suggestive of high thoughts, fine aspirations, sad memories. It throws the intellectual man back into his experiences, and impels the daring and generous youth forward in the path of his hopes and resolves. But in all this it relies upon those it addresses, pointing mysteriously before and behind, and accomplishing nothing of itself. But this is obviously owing to want of effort, not want of power. The author must follow the example of her hero, and give her days and her nights to the labour of her calling. She must look upon her heretofore attempts as so many separate studies, and construct with toil and determination a work of art not only harmonious in colouring, not only accurate in drawing, but skilful in Design.
[LADY SETTLERS IN AUSTRALIA.]
Dr Lang, in his description of the Port-Philip district, alludes to the success which may there attend female settlers who carry on the business of sheep-farming on their own account; and mentions the following facts on the subject:—
'On the morning after our arrival at Geelong, Dr Thomson accompanied me on a visit to Miss Drysdale, an elderly maiden lady from Scotland, whose acquaintance and friendship I had had the honour of making on my first visit to Geelong in the year 1843, when I had the pleasure of spending a day or two under her hospitable roof. Miss Drysdale is a lady of a highly-respectable family, and of superior intelligence, her brother having been the late Sir William Drysdale, treasurer of the city of Edinburgh. Having a considerable patrimony of her own, and being of an active disposition, and fond of rural pursuits, she had rented a large farm in Scotland, of which she superintended the management in person; but being a martyr, as she told me, to the coughs and colds, and other ills that flesh is heir to in our hyperborean Scottish climate, she resolved to emigrate to a milder region, where she might hope to enjoy better health, while she continued to indulge in her favourite pursuits, and endeavour to exert a salutary influence on some at least of her fellow-creatures, wherever Divine Providence might fix her lot. And, I am happy to add, Miss Drysdale sees no reason to regret the step she took, in pursuance of this resolution, in emigrating to Philipsland. She has uniformly enjoyed excellent health; she is in the midst of such scenes, and scenery, and occupations as she delighted in at home; the property she invested in stock on her arrival in the colony must have increased greatly during the interval that has since elapsed; and she has not only exhibited the goodly and influential example of a highly-respectable family living in the fear of God, and in the zealous observance of all the ordinances of religion, in a country in which, I am sorry to say, such examples are rare, but she has had it in her power to render the most valuable services to some who really required what she has proved to them—a friend indeed. At the period of my first visit to Geelong Miss Drysdale had two of the younger daughters of the late Mr Batman residing with her, to whom she was benevolently discharging the duty of a parent; and her character as a doer of good was generally known, and gratefully acknowledged, in the vicinity.
'On her arrival in the colony, Miss Drysdale determined to "squat," as it is styled in the phraseology of the country; that is, to settle on a tract of unoccupied crown land, of sufficient extent for the pasturage of considerable flocks and herds, with their increase for several years—a tract, in all likelihood, from twenty-five to fifty square miles in extent. For this land the occupant pays a yearly license-fee to the government of L.10, which insures to him for the time being the full possession of the entire tract; and it is universally understood that while this fee is paid, and no offence committed against the laws and the customs of squatting, the occupant shall not be disturbed, unless the land is sold in the meantime to a bona-fide purchaser, at not less than L.1 an acre, or required for government purposes—neither of which events is, in ordinary circumstances, at all likely to happen. It has not been allowed, for a good many years past, to give a squatting license of this kind to any person within a considerable distance of a township or village; but Miss Drysdale was allowed, as a special exception from this general rule, to occupy a station within four miles of the town of Geelong. On that station she accordingly erected a neat thatched cottage, with glazed rustic lattice-windows, which she had carried out with her from home, formed a garden, and fenced in a sufficient extent of superior land for cultivation. The cottage had been greatly improved, both externally and internally, at the period of my visit in 1846, and three years had made a wonderful change for the better upon the garden, which had gravelled walks dividing the different parterres—the only instance of the kind I had seen in the country, and strongly reminding me of home.
'The situation of Miss Drysdale's cottage, to which she has judiciously given the native name of the locality, Barrangoop, which signifies a turf, is on a gentle grassy slope towards the Barwon River, with the garden in front. The cottages of her farm-overseer and servants are close at hand, and remind one of a respectable farming establishment in the old country. On my first visit to Geelong, I found a respectable young man, who had been three sessions at the university of Glasgow, as an intending candidate for the Christian ministry, but who had subsequently abandoned his studies, and gone out as a bounty emigrant to Port Philip, acting in the humble capacity of tutor to the children of Miss Drysdale's overseer, a respectable Scotch farmer, with a large family. Upon the whole, there was something of a domestic character about Miss Drysdale's establishment generally which is but rarely seen at the squatting stations of the interior; and I could not help thinking that the very horses and cattle seemed to consider themselves more at home than elsewhere.