Dedication: This volume is dedicated affectionately to our relatives in New South Wales and Victoria.
Author's Introductory: The growth and development of Australia and New Zealand, present the last of the most important and interesting problems that the world can now see solved in respect to the evolution of the nation from the general community...It was possible initially to here build up communities of harmoniously co-ordinated classes, whence all evils common to civilised life in Europe could be wholly eliminated, and here it was possible so to educate and influence the mass of the people that each colony might be legislatively crystallised into a miniature Christendom....It is not for me to say here how the Austral colonies really stand in relation to this ideal polity, but I have ventured, through the medium of an imaginary character, to indicate, at all events, the direction in which much that might have been splendid success has been marred by incompleteness and even failure....Trent House, Trent Road, Brixton Hill, S.W. 1889.
John Alexander Ferguson's Bibliography of Australia : Volume VII : 1851-1900 (1969): 173 comments: 'Contains (inter alia) an account of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and sketches of Tasmania, Victoria, and Australian Art.'
