George Higinbotham, the present Chief-Justice, who is about the last person in the world to offer himself as a subject even to the most celebrated of literary limners. To revert to Sir Henry Parkes, who, I must say, does not receive justice at the hands of Mr. Froude, I repeat that he is, and has been for many years, the most remarkable public figure in New South Wales.
Born over seventy years ago, of humble parents, under the shadow of Stoneleigh Abbey, Sir Henry Parkes received the rudiments of his education at the village school in the beautiful county of Shakespeare and George Eliot. Like almost all those adventurous spirits who have left their mark in the annals of Australia, he migrated thither in his early manhood. His long public career in New South Wales has been one of ceaseless strife and frequent vicissitude, and it is no secret that as in the case of greater statesmen he has shown himself more capable of controlling the affairs of the community than of managing his own. Quickly emerging from obscurity in the then rising city of Sydney, Parkes proved his strength when there were at least two giants in the land—Robert Lowe, then in the early vigour
