Boston Gazette, America:--"One of the most powerfully written and most absorbingly interesting novels that has lately attracted our notice is His Natural Life, by Marcus Clarke. It is a story dealing with convict life in Australia, and has been written 'for a purpose.' The plot is constructed with remarkable skill, and in the depicting of character the author manifests a talent we have rarely seen surpassed in any modern writer of fiction. A similar high degree of praise may be awarded him for his description of scenery. The book is intensely dramatic both in subject and treatment, but it is quite free from 'sensationalism' in the objectionable sense of the word. The style is healthy, manly and vigorous, and shows a surprising facility in word painting. Mr. Clarke professes to have drawn his characters, localities and incidents directly from nature, and his work bears internal evidence that he has. It is the most stirring story of its class that has appeared since Victor Hugo's Les Misèrables, of which it has all the fire and artistic feeling, minus the affectation. This novel cannot fail to make its mark."
The Stectator, London:--"It is something to write a book so powerful, especially as all the power is directed to the noblest end."
Saturday Review, London:--"There is undeniable strength in what Mr. Clarke has written."
Morning Post, London:--"This novel appals while it fascinates, by reason of the terrible reality which marks the individual characters living and breathing in it. The tragic power of its situations, the knowledge of the sombre life which the author shows so vividly in the able handling of its subject, the pathos which here and there crops up like an oasis in a sandy desert, lead the reader from the beaten track of fiction."
The Graphic, London:--"It is, of course, possible that Mr. Marcus Clarke may turn out to be a man of one book, and out of his element in any atmosphere but that of convict and penal settlements. He shows, however, too much knowledge of human nature generally to make us think this at all likely, and if so, he must be hailed as a valuable recruit to the ranks of novelists of the day."
Vanity Fair, London:--"There is an immensity of power in this most extraordinary book."
The World, London:--"Few persons will read his remarkable descriptions of convict life and antipodean scenery without recognising an author of commanding originality and strength."
The Reform, Hamburg (translated irom the German.):--"This novel treats of a terrible subject. The life of the prisoners in Van Diemen's land is set before us in a panorama painted by a master hand. Ladies of a sentimental turn had better abstain from reading this story, unless they choose to risk a nervous fever. The romance is full of power. The writer illuminates the lowest depths of human nature in a manner which holds us spell-bound, despite ourselves. Marcus Clarke is a master of psychology, and his descriptions of nature are as effective as his style is pure."
And from no less a giant in literature than Oliver Wendell Holmes, of Boston, America, the following complimentary letter was received by Clarke in acknowledgment of a copy of the novel sent to the author of the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table:--"The pictures of life under the dreadful conditions to which the convicts were submitted are very painful, no doubt, but we cannot question the fact that they were only copied from realities as bad as their darkest shadows. The only experiences at all resembling these horrors which our people have had were the cruelties to which our prisoners were subjected in some of the southern pens for human creatures during the late war. I do not think they were driven to cannibalism, but the most shocking stories were told of the condition to which they were reduced by want of food and crowding together. There are some Robinson Crusoe touches in your story, which add greatly to its interest, and I should think that the colonists, and thousands at home in the mother country, would find it full of attraction in spite of its painful revelations. This work cannot fail to draw attention, and make your name widely known and appreciated as an author throughout the world."
Besides contributing this historical romance to the columns of the Australian Journal Clarke was busy writing in the Australasian those sketches of the early days of Australia, which were afterwards published in book form under the title of Old Tales of a Young Country. These sketches, like his great novel, though highly interesting as historical records of the colonies, were for the most part worked up from governmental pamphlets and old journals. But in the casting they were stamped by the genius of the master-hand, which could appropriate and improve upon the appropriation as only men of original calibre are able to do. In the meantime the "Peripatetic Philosopher" ceased to adorn the pages of the Australasian with his caustic and eccentric dissertations, because, through the influence of one of the noblest patrons of letters in Victoria--the late Sir Redmond Barry--the Philosopher had been found a congenial post as Secretary to the Trustees of the Public Library, of whom Sir Redmond himself was the respected President. This appointment was made in June, 1870, and from that time Clarke ceased to be connected with the staff of any journal, though remaining a brilliant and valued contributor all his life to newspapers, magazines, reviews, &c., instead of, unfortunately, concentrating his exceptional powers on the production of works of a class with His Natural Life. Among other articles contributed by him about this time were the "Buncle Letters," which appeared in the Argus and attracted much attention, being running comments of a satirically humorous character, on the social and political events of the day, supposed to be written by one brother resident in town to his less sophisticated brother in the country. In the same journal, Clarke wrote a descriptive sketch of the mining mania which had seized upon Sandhurst at the time; and for piquancy the sketch was among his best in descriptive journalism. At this period, also, he once more tried his hand at the drama, and adapted for John Dunn, his father-in-law, Moliére's celebrated comedy, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, into English, under the title of Peacock's Feathers, which was produced with great success at the Theatre Royal. Mention has been made of the interest Sir Rednond Barry evinced in the rising littérateur whom he took under his parental wing when obtaining for him the post in the Public Library. And this interest and regard the respected Judge retained for his protégé, despite his oft-repeated thoughtless acts, to the end of his life, which end arrived, strange to say, only some few months before that of the much younger man, who, on hearing of Sir Redmond's death, expressed himself as having lost his best and truest friend. But with all the warm regard existing between the vererable judge and the youthful author, there was always a certain characteristic hauteur on the one hand, and a reverential respect on the other, in their official and social relationships. In proof of this a couple of examples may be related. It was a hot summer's day, and, as was his style in such weather, the librarian was dressed dandily in unspotted white flannel, a cabbage-tree hat shadowing his face. So clothed he was leisurely wending his way up the steps of the library when he met the President, looling more starched, if possible, than ever, and wearing the well-known, flat-rimmed, tapering, belltopper, which shone sleekily in the glare of the noonday sun. The following brief dialogue then ensued:--President: "Good morning, Mr. Clarke." Librarian: "Good morning, sir." President: "I scarcely think your hat is exactly suited to the position you occupy in connection