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Town Life in Australia

by Richard Ernest Nowell Twopeny · English · Gutenberg #16664 · 434,242 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Town Life in Australia

Author: Richard Ernest Nowell Twopeny


        
Release date: September 6, 2005 [eBook #16664]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16664

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOWN LIFE IN AUSTRALIA ***




Produced by Col Choat





TOWN LIFE IN AUSTRALIA.

BY

R. E. N. TWOPENY,

OFFICER D'ACADEMIE DE FRANCE, AND LATE SECRETARY TO THE ROYAL COMMISSION
FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA AT THE PARIS, SYDNEY, AND MELBOURNE EXHIBITIONS.

LONDON:
ELLIOT STOCK,
62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.

1883.



INTRODUCTION.

The following work was originally written as a series of letters; but the
epistolary form has only been partially retained. As it has necessarily
been carried through the press without communication with the writer, who
is now in New Zealand, errors may possibly have been committed, for which
the editor rather than the writer is responsible; it is hoped, however,
that these will not be found numerous.



CONTENTS.

A WALK ROUND MELBOURNE
SYDNEY
ADELAIDE
HOUSES
FURNITURE
SERVANTS
FOOD
DRESS
YOUNG AUSTRALIA
SOCIAL RELATIONS
RELIGION AND MORALS
EDUCATION
POLITICS
BUSINESS
SHOPS
AMUSEMENTS
NEWSPAPERS
LITERATURE, LANGUAGE, AND ART



A WALK ROUND MELBOURNE.


Although most educated people know that Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide
are populous towns, I should doubt whether one Englishman, who has not
been to Australia, out of a hundred _realizes_ that fact. I well remember
that, although I had taken some trouble to read up information about
Melbourne, I was never more thoroughly surprised than during the first
few hours after my arrival there. And I hear almost everyone who comes
out from England say that his experience has been the same as my own. In
one sense the visitor is disappointed with his first day in an Australian
city. The novelties and the differences from the Old Country do not
strike him nearly so much as the resemblances. It is only as he gets to
know the place better that he begins to to notice the differences. The
first prevailing impression is that a slice of Liverpool has been bodily
transplanted to the Antipodes, that you must have landed in England again
by mistake, and it is only by degrees that you begin to see that the
resemblance is more superficial than real.

Although Sydney is the older town, Melbourne is justly entitled to be
considered the metropolis of the Southern Hemisphere. The natural
beauties of Sydney are worth coming all the way to Australia to see;
while the situation of Melbourne is commonplace if not actually ugly; but
it is in the Victorian city that the trade and capital, the business and
pleasure of Australia chiefly centre. Is there a company to be got up to
stock the wilds of Western Australia, or to form a railway on the
land-grant system in Queensland, to introduce the electric light, or to
spread education amongst the black fellows, the promoters either belong
to Melbourne, or go there for their capital. The headquarters of nearly
all the large commercial institutions which extend their operation beyond
the limits of any one colony are to be found there. If you wish to
transact business well and quickly, to organize a new enterprise--in
short, to estimate and understand the trade of Australia, you must go to
Melbourne and not to Sydney, and this in spite of the fact that Victoria
is a small colony handicapped by heavy protectionist duties, whilst
Sydney is, comparatively speaking, a free port, at the base of an
enormous area. The actual production does not take place in Victoria, but
it is in Melbourne that the money resulting from the productions of other
colonies as well as of Victoria is turned over. It is Melbourne money
chiefly that opens up new tracts of land for settlement in the interior
of the continent, and Melbourne brains that find the outlets for fresh
commerce in every direction. There is a bustle and life about Melbourne
which you altogether miss in Sydney. The Melbourne man is always on the
look-out for business, the Sydney man waits for business to come to him.
The one is always in a hurry, the other takes life more easily. And as it
is with business, so it is with pleasure.

If you are a man of leisure you will find more society in Melbourne, more
balls and parties, a larger measure of intellectual life--i.e., more
books and men of education and intellect, more and better theatrical and
musical performances, more racing and cricket, football, and athletic
clubs, a larger leisured class than in Sydney. The bushman who comes to
town to 'knock down his cheque,' the squatter who wants a little
amusement, both prefer Melbourne to spend their money in. The Melbourne
races attract three or four times the number of visitors that the Sydney
races do; all public amusements are far better attended in Melbourne; the
people dress better, talk better, think better, are better, if we accept
Herbert Spencer's definition of Progress. There is far more 'go' and far
more 'life,' in every sense of these rather comprehensive words, to be
found in Melbourne, and it is there that the visitor must come who wishes
to see the fullest development of Australasian civilisation, whether in
commerce or education, in wealth or intellect, in manners and customs--in
short, in every department of life.

If you ask how this anomaly is to be explained, I can only answer that
the shutting out of Sydney from the country behind it by a barrier of
mountains hindered its early development; whilst the gold-diggings
transformed Melbourne from a village into a city almost by magic; that
the first population of Sydney was of the wrong sort, whilst that which
flooded Melbourne from 1851 to 1861 was eminently adventurous and
enterprising; that Melbourne having achieved the premier position, Sydney
has, with all its later advantages, found the truth of the proverbs: 'A
stern chase is a long chase,' and 'To him that hath shall be given.'

Passengers by ocean-going vessels to Melbourne land either at Sandridge
or Williamstown, small shipping towns situated on either side of the
river Yarra, which is only navigable by the smaller craft. A quarter of
an hour in the train brings the visitor into the heart of the city. On
getting out he can hardly fail to be impressed by the size of the
buildings around him, and by the width of the streets, which are laid out
in rectangular blocks, the footpaths being all well paved or asphalted.
In spite of the abundance of large and fine-looking buildings, there is a
rather higgledy-piggledy look about the town--the city you will by this
time own it to be. There are no building laws, and every man has built as
seemed best in his own eyes. The town is constantly outgrowing the
majority of its buildings, and although the wise plan of allowing for the
rapid growth of a young community, and building for the requirements of
the future rather than of the present, is generally observed, there are
still gaps in the line of the streets towards the outskirts, and houses
remaining which were built by unbelievers in the future before the city.
In the main thoroughfares you might fancy yourself in an improved
Edgeware Road. In a few years Collins and Bourke Streets will be very
like Westbourne Grove. The less frequented streets in the city are like
those of London suburbs. There _are_ a few lanes which it is wiser not to
go down after ten o'clock at night. These are known as the back slums.
But nowhere is there any sign of poverty or anything at all resembling
Stepney or the lower parts of an European city, The Chinese quarter is
the nearest approach thereto, but it is quite _sui generis_, and squalor
is altogether absent.

The town is well lighted with gas, and the water-supply, from reservoirs
on the Yarra a few miles above, is plentiful, but not good for drinking.
There Is no underground drainage system. All the sewage is carried away
in huge open gutters, which run all through the town, and are at their
worst and widest in the most central part, where all the principal shops
and business places are situated. These gutters are crossed by little
wooden bridges every fifty yards. When it rains, they rise to the
proportion of small torrents, and have on several occasions proved fatal
to drunken men. In one heavy storm, indeed, a sober strong man was
carried off his legs by the force of the stream, and ignominiously
drowned in a gutter. You may imagine how unpleasant these little rivers
are to carriage folk. In compensation they are as yet untroubled with
tramways, although another couple of years will probably see rails laid
all over the city.

It is a law in every Australian town that no visitor shall be allowed to
rest until he has seen all its sights, done all its lions, and, above
all, expressed his surprise and admiration at them. With regard to their
public institutions, the colonists are like children with a new
toy--delighted with it themselves, and not contented until everybody they
meet has declared it to be delightful. There are some people who vote all
sightseeing a bore, but if they come to Melbourne I would advise them at
least to do the last part of their duty--express loudly and generally
their admiration at everything that is mentioned to them. Whether they
have seen it or not is, after all, their own affair.

In this respect a Professor at the Melbourne University, on a holiday
trip to New Zealand, has just told me an amusing anecdote, for the
literal truth of which he vouches. A couple of young Englishmen fresh
from Oxford came to Melbourne in the course of a trip round the world to
open up their minds! For fear of a libel suit I may at once say I am not
alluding to the Messrs. Chamberlain. They brought letters of introduction
to Professor S----, who proposed, according to the custom of the place,
to 'show them round.' 'Have you seen the Public Library?' he began. 'No,'
answered the Oxonian. Shall I take you over it?' continued the Professor;
'it is one of the finest in the world, well worth seeing; and we can kill
two birds with one stone by seeing the Museum and National Gallery at the
same time.' 'Well, no, thanks,' was the reply; 'it's awfully good of you,
we know; but I say, the fact is books are books, all the world over, and
pictures are pictures; and as for minerals, I can't say we understand
them--not in our line, you understand.'

The Professor now thought he would try them with something out-of-doors,
and proposed a walk to the Botanical Gardens, which was met with 'Don't
you think it's rather hot for a walk? Besides, to tell the truth, one
garden is very much like another.' 'But these are very large,' persisted
the Professor; 'not scientific gardens like Kew, but capital places to
walk and sit about in. There are a number of flowers there, too, which
you cannot see at home.' Oxonian No. 2, however, came to the breach: 'We
bought a lot of flowers at a shop in Collins Street yesterday, and we are
going to send a hamper of ferns home; so that if you won't think it
uncivil of us to refuse your kindness, we won't take up your time by
going so far.'

Although somewhat abashed, the Professor thought of several other 'lions'
which they might like to see, but was invariably met with the same polite
refusal, till at last he gave it up as a bad job, and turned the
conversation to general subjects. They had taken up their hats, and were
saying good-bye. The Professor, who is a kind-hearted man, and was really
anxious to be of service to the two friends, felt quite vexed with
himself that he could do nothing more than ask them to dine. So, just as
they were parting with the usual mutual expressions of goodwill, he asked
in a despondent, almost prayerful tone: 'Are you quite sure there is;
nothing I can do for you? Pray make use of me if you can, and I shall be
only too delighted.' The reply was in a rather nervous voice from the
younger man, who blushed as he asked the favour: 'Do you know anyone who
has got a lawn-tennis court? We should so awfully like to have a game.'

The Professor introduced them to the head and to some of the
undergraduates of the affiliated colleges close by, and heard very little
more of them till they came to dinner with him a fortnight later, the day
before they were to leave Melbourne. The conversation at dinner turned of
course upon what they had seen during their visit, with which they
declared themselves immensely pleased. But when asked as to the things
which had most impressed them, it came out that Sundays were the only
days they had gone out of the town; that they had not been to see a
public institution or building, except their bank and the theatres.
'Surely you can't have spent all your time at the club,' said the
Professor, 'though there is a capital library there; and, by the way, did
you ever play tennis at Ormond College?' And then came the reply from
both at once. It turned out that they had been to Ormond College to play
tennis twice a day, except when they stopped lunch there. And then
followed a technical description of the college tennis-courts, the
Australian play, etc., etc.

But the cream of the story is not yet reached. The young men were to
leave the next day for Japan, and the Professor waxed enthusiastic over
the delights in store for them in that land of the morning. He quoted
anecdotes and passages from Miss Bird's book, and repeated more than once
that he envied them their trip. 'Well, yes, you know,' said the eldest,
'we've got several introductions; and I hear there are lots of English in
Tokio, so that we are sure to get plenty of tennis.'

There are not many people who are likely to be so frank, not to say dull,
as the Professor's friends; but how many people there are who travel
round the world and see nothing! There is a moral in the story which is
probably applicable to at least half of my readers, more or less.

Of the public buildings, which are scattered in considerable numbers
about the town, the largest are the New Law Courts, which have just been
erected at a cost of £300,000. They contain 130 rooms, and provide
accommodation for the Supreme Court, the County Court, the Insolvent
Court, the Equity Court, and for the various offices of the Crown Law
Department. The plan is that of a quadrangle, with a centre surmounted by
a dome 137 feet high. Still more elaborate and magnificent are the
Parliament Houses not yet completed, the front alone of which is to cost
£180,000. With regard to the architecture of these buildings, there is
ample room for difference of opinion, but everyone will agree to admire
the classic simplicity of the Public Library, erected some twenty years
ago, which is planned with a view to the subsequent erection of a
National Gallery and Museum, to complete a really noble pile of
buildings. And it is well worth while to go inside. The Library is
absolutely free to everybody, contains over 110,000 volumes, and has
accommodation for 600 readers. An interesting feature is the large
newspaper-room, where scores of working-men can be seen reading papers
and magazines from all parts of the world. At the back of the same
building are the painting and sculpture galleries, with which is
connected a school of art and design. Behind these again is a museum. In
the galleries there are a few good modern paintings, and a large number
of mediocre ones. The statuary consists mainly of well-executed casts and
four marble statues by the late Mr. Summers. The museum is only likely to
be of interest to entomologists and mineralogists, the collection in both
these departments being considered very good. The foundation and the
success of the whole of this institution are almost entirely due to the
late Sir Redmond Barry, who did almost as much for the University, which
has also been exceedingly useful and successful from every point of view.
As a building it is not equal to the Sydney University, although it
possesses a splendid Gothic Hall, the gift of Sir Samuel Wilson, who now
lives at Hughenden. In connection with the University is an excellent
Zoological Museum, which is interesting to more than specialists.

Other fine buildings are the Government Offices, the Town Hall with its
enormous organ, the Post Office, the International Exhibition--all built
on a truly metropolitan scale, which is even exceeded by the palatial
hugeness of the Government House, the ugliness of which is proverbial
throughout Australia. But, perhaps, the class of buildings, which must in
every Australian city most excite the surprise of the visitor, are the
hospitals and asylums. There are no less than ten splendid structures in
Melbourne devoted to charitable purposes. The Roman Catholics have built
a fine cathedral, but it is not yet finished. The Church of England is
collecting money for a similar purpose. Meanwhile the prettiest church
belongs to the Presbyterians. None of the other churches are in any way
remarkable. Anyone who has not seen the London Mint will find the
Melbourne Mint worth a visit. The Observatory contains one of the largest
telescopes in the world; and even if there are no races going on, the
Flemington Racecourse is a 'lion' of the largest dimensions. There are
four theatres, only one of which is well-fitted up. The visitor will
notice that drinking bars are invariable and very disagreeable
accompaniments of every theatre. One bar is generally just opposite the
entrance to the dress circle, an arrangement which is particularly
annoying to ladies.

Altogether, the public buildings of Melbourne do the greatest credit to
the public spirit of the colonists, and offer substantial testimony to
the largeness of their views and the thoroughness of their belief in the
future of their country. There is certainly no city in England which can
boast of nearly as many fine buildings, or as large ones, proportionately
to its size, as Melbourne. And this is the more remarkable, remembering,
that even in the existing hard times, masons are getting 10s. 6d. a day
of eight hours, and often a very dawdling eight hours too.

The Botanic Gardens, just outside the town, are well worth a visit. They
have no great scientific pretensions, as their name would imply, but are
merely pleasure-grounds, decked with all the variety of flowers which
this land of Cockaigne produces in abundance. Besides these, there are
several pretty reserves, notably the Fitzroy, Carlton, and University
Gardens, and the Regent's Park, which are all well kept and refreshing to
the eye after the dust and glare of the town.

The proportions of the commercial buildings and business premises are on
the same large and elaborate scale. Of the architecture, as a rule, the
less said the better; but everything is at least more spacious than at
home. The climate and the comparative cheapness of land give the
colonists an aversion to height in their buildings, and even in the
busiest parts of Melbourne most of the buildings have only two
stories--i.e., a ground-floor and one above--and I can hardly think of
any with more than three. The sums which banking companies pay for the
erection of business premises are enormous. Thirty to sixty thousand
pounds is the usual cost of their headquarters. The large insurance
companies have also caught the building mania, and the joint-stock
companies which are now springing up in all directions emulate them. The
Australian likes to have plenty of elbow-room. He cannot understand how
wealthy merchants can work in the dingy dens which serve for the offices
of many a London merchant prince. In this matter, contrary to his usual
practice, he is apt to consider the surface rather than what is beneath
it; and it is an accepted maxim in commercial circles that money spent on
buildings--which is of course borrowed in England at English rates of
interest--is amongst the cheapest forms of advertising a rising business
and keeping an established business going. Nobody in a young country has
a long memory, and nothing is so firmly established but that it may be
overthrown if it does not keep up with the times.

The general run of shops are little better than in English towns of the
same size, if we except those of some dozen drapers and ironmongers in
Melbourne, and two or three in Sydney, which are exceptionally good. Of
these it may be said that they would be creditable to London itself. Both
trades are much more comprehensive than in England. A large Melbourne
draper will sell you anything, from a suit of clothes to furniture, where
he comes into competition with the ironmonger, whose business includes
agricultural machinery, crockery and plate. The larger firms in both
these trades combine wholesale and retail business, and their shops are
quite amongst the sights of Australia. Nowhere out of an exhibition and
Whiteley's is it possible to meet so heterogeneous a collection. A
peculiarity of Melbourne is that the shop-windows there are much better
set out than is customary in England. It is not so in Sydney. Indeed
Melbourne has decidedly the best set of shops, not only in outward
appearance, but as to the variety and quality of the articles sold in
them. Next to the drapers and ironmongers, the booksellers' shops are the
most creditable. The style of the smaller shops in every colonial town is
as English as English can be. The only difference is in the prices, but
of that more anon when we go into the shops.

The river Yarra runs through the city, and is navigable as far as its
centre by coasting steamers and all but the larger sailing craft. Above
the harbour it is lined with trees and very pretty, and in spite of many
windings it is wide enough for boat-races. Below it is uninteresting, and
chiefly remarkable for the number and variety of the perfumes which arise
from the manufactories on its banks. Next to the monotony of the Suez
Canal, with which it presents many points of resemblance, I know few
things more tiresome than the voyage up the Yarra in an intercolonial
steamer of 600 or 700 tons, which goes aground every ten minutes, and
generally, as if on purpose, just in front of a boiling-down
establishment.

If the Australian cities can claim a sad eminence, if not an actual
supremacy, in the number of their public houses, of which there are no
less than 1,120 in Melbourne, I am sorry to say that they are as much
behind London in their ideas of the comforts of an hotel as London is
behind San Francisco. Melbourne is certainly better off than Sydney or
Adelaide, but bad are its best hotels. Of these Menzies' and the Oriental
are most to be recommended; after these try the United Club Hotel, or, if
you be a bachelor, Scott's. The hotels, I think without exception, derive
their chief income from the bar traffic, with which, at all but the few I
have mentioned, you cannot help being brought more or less into contact.
Lodgers are quite a secondary consideration. This is very disagreeable
for ladies. The best hotels, moreover, have no _table d'hote_--only the
old-fashioned coffee and commercial rooms; so that if you are travelling
_en famille_ you have no choice but to have your meals in a private
sitting-room. For a bachelor, who is not particular so long as his rooms
are clean, and can put up with plain fare, there need, however, be no
difficulty in getting accommodation; but anyone who wishes to be
comfortable had better live at the clubs, which in every one of the
'capitals' are most liberal in their hospitality, and have bedrooms on
their premises. Visitors to the colony are made honorary members for a
month on the introduction of any two members, and the term is extended to
six months on the small subscription of a guinea a month. The Melbourne
Club is the best appointed in the Colonies. The rooms are comfortable,
and decently though by no means luxuriously furnished, and a very fair
table is kept. The servants wear full livery. There is a small library,
all the usual appurtenances of a London club, and a racquet-court. The
other clubs, though less pretentious, are all comfortable.

Your colonial rarely walks a step farther than he can help, and of course
laziness is well provided with cabs and omnibuses. You can take your
choice between one-horse waggonettes and hansoms, though a suspicion of
Bohemia still lingers about the latter. Happily Mrs. Grundy has never
introduced 'growlers.' The waggonettes are light boxes on wheels, covered
in with oil-cloth, which can be rolled up in a few seconds if the weather
is fine or warm. It is strange that victorias like those in Paris have
never been tried in this warm climate. A few years ago Irish
jaunting-cars and a jolting vehicle called a 'jingle' were much used, but
they have slipped out of favour of late, and are now almost obsolete. The
fares are usually moderate, ranging from a shilling for a quarter of an
hour to the same coin for the first mile, and sixpence for every
subsequent one. Cabby is fairly civil, but, as at home, always expects
more than his legal fare.

Nowhere do omnibuses drive a more thriving trade than in Melbourne, and
they deserve it, for they are fast, clean, roomy, and well managed. The
price of labour makes conductors too expensive a luxury, and passengers
have to put their fare--in most cases threepence--into a little glass box
close to the driver's seat. This unfortunate man, in addition to looking
after the horses, and opening and shutting the door by means of a strap
tied to his foot, which you pull when you want to get out, has to give
change whenever a little bell is rung, and to see that the threepences in
the glass box correspond to the number of passengers. Yet not only does
he drive fast and carefully along the crowded thoroughfares, but it is
difficult to escape without paying. Several times when a 'bus has been
crowded I have tried the effect of omitting payment. Invariably the
driver has touched his bell, and if that is not attended to, he puts his
face to the chink through which change is passed, and having re-counted
the number of people in the 'bus, civilly intimates that 'some gentleman
has forgotten to put in his fare.' Where the omnibus companies have not
penetrated, waggonettes similar to those previously described pioneer the
road, and on some well-frequented lines they run in competition with the
omnibuses.

I don't know that it would be true to say that the number of horses and
vehicles in the streets strikes the stranger's eye as a rule. A man
accustomed to the traffic of London streets passes over the traffic of
Melbourne, great as it is for a town of its size, without notice. But I
think he cannot but notice the novel nature of the Melbourne traffic, the
prevalence of that light four-wheeled vehicle called the 'buggy,' which
we have imported via America, and the extraordinary number of horsemen he
meets. The horses at first sight strike the eye unpleasantly. They look
rough, and are rarely properly groomed. But, as experience will soon
teach the stranger, they are far less delicate than English horses. They
get through a considerably greater quantity of work, and are less
fatigued at the end of it.

A walk down Collins Street or Flinders Lane would astonish some of the
City Croesuses. But if a visitor really wishes to form an idea of the
wealth concentrated in Melbourne, he cannot do better than spend a week
walking round the suburbs, and noting the thousands of large roomy houses
and well-kept gardens which betoken incomes of over two thousand a year,
and the tens of thousands of villas whose occupants must be spending from
a thousand to fifteen hundred a year. All these suburbs are connected
with the town by railway. A quarter of an hour will bring you ten miles
to Brighton, and twelve minutes will take you to St. Kilda, the most
fashionable watering-place. Within ten minutes by rail are the inland
suburbs, Toorak, South Yarra, and Kew, all three very fashionable;
Balaclava, Elsterwick, and Windsor, outgrowths of St. Kilda, also
fashionable; Hawthorn, which is budding well; Richmond, adjacent to East
Melbourne, and middle class; and Emerald Hill and Albert Park, with a
working-class population. Adjoining the city itself are North Melbourne,
Fitzroy, Carlton, Hotham, and East Melbourne, all except the last
inhabited by the working-classes. Emerald Hill and Hotham have handsome
town halls of their own, and the larger of these suburbs form
municipalities. Nearly everybody who can lives in the suburbs, and the
excellence of the railway system enables them to extend much farther away
from the city than in Adelaide or Sydney. It is strange that the
Australian townsman should have so thoroughly inherited the English love
of living as far as possible away from the scene of his business and work
during the day.

The names of the suburbs afford food for reflection. Yarra is the only
native name. Sir Charles Hotham and Sir Charles Fitzroy were the
governors at the time of the foundation of the municipalities which bear
their names. The date of the foundation of St. Kilda is evidenced by the
name of its streets--Alma, Inkerman, Redan, Malakoff, Sebastopol, Raglan,
Cardigan, and Balaclava, the last of which gave its name later on to a
new suburb, which grew up at one end of it. In the city proper the
principal streets are named after colonial celebrities in the early
days--Flinders, Bourke, Collins, Lonsdale, Spencer, Stephen, Swanston,
while King, Queen, and William Streets each tell a tale. Elizabeth Street
was perhaps named after the virgin queen to whose reign the accession of
the Princess Victoria called attention.

As you walk round you cannot fail to notice the sunburnt faces of the
people you meet. Melbourne is said to have the prettiest girls in
Australia. I am no judge. On first arrival their sallow complexions
strike you most disagreeably, and it is some time before you will allow
that there is a pretty girl in the country. When you get accustomed to
this you will recognise that as a rule they have good figures, and that
though there are no beauties, a larger number of girls have pleasant
features than in England. What may be called nice looking girls abound
all over Australia. In dress the Melbourne ladies are too fond of bright
colours, but it can never be complained against them that they are
dowdy--a fault common to their Sydney, Adelaide, and English sisters--and
they certainly spend a great deal of money on their dress, every article
of which costs about 50 per cent. more than at home. In every town the
shop girls and factory girls--in short, all the women belonging to the
industrial classes--are well dressed, and look more refined than in
England. Men, on the other hand, are generally very careless about their
attire, and dress untidily. The business men all wear black frock-coats
and top hats. They look like city men whose clothes have been cut in the
country. The working-men are dressed much more expensively than at home,
and there are no threadbare clothes to be seen. Everybody has a
well-to-do look There is not so much bustle as in the City, but the faces
of 'all sorts and conditions of men' are more cheerful, and less careworn
and anxious. You can see that bread-and-butter never enters into the
cares of these people; it is only the cake which is sometimes endangered.
or has not sufficient plums in it.

SYDNEY.

I suppose that nearly everyone has heard of the beauties of Sydney
Harbour--'our harbour,' as the Sydneyites fondly call it. If you want a
description of them read Trollope's book. He has not exaggerated an iota
on this point. Sydney Harbour is one of those few sights which, like
Niagara, remain photographed on the memory of whoever has been so
fortunate as to see them. With this difference, however--the impression
of Niagara is instantaneous; it stamps itself upon you in a moment, and
though further observation may make the details more clear, it cannot add
to the depth of the impressions. But Sydney Harbour grows upon you. At
the first glance I think you will be a little disappointed. It is only as
you drink in each fresh beauty that its wonderful loveliness takes
possession of you. The more you explore its creeks and coves--forming
altogether 260 miles of shore--the more familiar you become with each
particular headland or reach, the greater your enchantment. You fall in
love with it, so to speak, and often I look up at the water-colour sketch
of Double Bay which hangs over my dining-room mantelpiece, and hope the
hope which partakes of expectation, that before long I shall see Sydney
Harbour again.

And it is as admirable from a practical as from an artistic point of
view. The _Austral_ and the _Orient_ can be moored alongside natural
wharves in the very heart of the city. There are coves sufficient to hold
the combined fleets of the world, mercantile and naval. The outer harbour
is the paradise of yachtsmen; the inner, of oarsmen. The gardens of
suburban villas run down to the water's edge along the headlands and
points, and there are thousands of unoccupied building sites from which
you can enjoy a view fit for the gods.

One feels quite angry with the town for being so unworthy of its site.
Certainly, one of the greatest charms of the harbour must have been
wanting when it was uninhabited, and the view of the city and suburbs as
you come up into port is as charming and picturesque, as that of
Melbourne from Port Philip is commonplace and repellent. But when you get
near the wharf the charm vanishes. Never was there a more complete case
of distance lending enchantment to the view. Not but that there are
plenty of fine buildings, public and private; but the town is still much
farther back in its chrysalis stage than Melbourne. Time alone can, and
is rapidly making away with the old tumble-down buildings which spoil the
appearance of their neighbours. But time cannot easily widen the streets
of Sydney, nor rectify their crookedness. They were originally dug out by
cart-ruts, whereas those of nearly every other town in Australia were
mapped out long before they were inhabited. But if they were not so
ill-kept, and the footpaths so wretchedly paved, I could forgive the
narrowness and crookedness of the Sydney streets, on account of their
homely appearance. They are undeniably old friends, such as you can meet
in hundreds of towns in Europe. Their very unsuitableness for the
practical wants of a large city becomes a pleasant contrast to the
practical handsomeness of Melbourne and Adelaide. The size and
handsomeness of individual buildings is lost in the Sydney streets. You
look at the street from one end, and put it down in your mind as no
better than a lane; you walk down it without noticing the merits of the
buildings it contains; whereas in Melbourne both the general effect and
each individual building are shown off to the greatest advantage; but
there is a certain picturesqueness and old-fashionedness about Sydney,
which brings back pleasant memories of Old England, after the monotonous
perfection of Melbourne and Adelaide.

The most unpleasant feature about Sydney is, that there is a thoroughly
untidy look about the place. It is in a perennial state of _déshabille_;
whereas Melbourne nearly always has its dress-clothes on. In keeping with
the wretched pavements, the muddy crossings, and the dust, are the
clothes of the people you meet in the streets. Nobody seems to care much
how they dress, and without being exactly countrified in their apparel,
the Sydneyites succeed in looking pre-eminently dowdy.

The water-supply is not always quite as plentiful as could be wished; but
on the other hand, there is an excellent system of deep drainage, and the
eye is not offended by open sewers, as in Melbourne. You will notice that
there are not so many private carriages here, and fewer horsemen. The
traffic appears greater, but this is entirely owing to the narrowness of
the streets. It is not so rapid, as you will easily perceive.

You land, as I think I mentioned, in the heart of the city, and, unless
you prefer Shanks's pony, must perforce take a hansom to your hotel, or,
if you have much luggage, two hansoms, for four-wheelers are almost
unknown. In compensation, the Sydney hansoms are the cleanest and fastest
you will ever have the good fortune to come across. Steam trams run out
to the railway station, which is at the farther end of the town, and to
all the suburbs. There is practically but one hotel to go
to--Petty's--and that very inferior. In most matters of this kind Sydney
is only a second-rate edition of Melbourne.

The beauties of Sydney are certainly rather natural than artificial, and
since one can always see a big town more or less like Melbourne, whilst
the scenery of Sydney Harbour is almost unique of its kind, if I were
obliged to see only one of the two places, I would rather see Sydney. But
although, Sydney is poorly laid out, it must not be imagined that it is
poorly built. On the contrary. Its buildings are put in the shade as
regards size by those of Melbourne but if you had not seen Melbourne
first, you would certainly have been surprised by the number and size of
the public buildings of Sydney. The rich man loses his sense of the
proportionate value of moneys. But Sydney has the great advantage of
possessing superior building material in a red and grey sandstone of
great durability, which forms the substratum of the whole district in
which it is built, while Melbourne has mainly to rely on a blue stone
found at some distance, and has to import the stone for its best
buildings from either Sydney or Tasmania. I must confess too, that I
prefer the general style of architecture in Sydney to that most common in
Melbourne. First and foremost, owing to the more limited area of the
business part of the town, the Sydney buildings are much loftier.
Melbourne and Adelaide always look to me as if some one had taken his
seat upon the top of them and squashed them down. Sydney is taller and
more irregular. It climbs up and down a whole series of hills, and
protrudes at all kinds of unexpected points. The city proper has no very
definite boundaries, and you hardly know where the city begins and the
suburbs end.

Of the public buildings of Sydney, the handsomest are the Treasury, the
Colonial Secretary's office, and the Lands Office, each four or five
stories high, and close to the water's edge. The Colonial Secretary's
office is only second to the Melbourne Law Courts amongst the completed
buildings of Australia. It is lofty, massive, and dignified outwardly,
elegant and spacious inside, although it has been fitted up in the most
incongruous fashion with odds and ends of third-rate statuary, imitation
bronzes, etc., until it looks like an old curiosity-shop. The University,
though comparatively an old building, still holds its ground amongst the
best, and may well be proud of its splendidly proportioned hall, built in
fifteenth-century Gothic. The Roman Catholic Cathedral, which has just
been opened, is also well proportioned. The length is 350 feet; width
within transept 118 feet; width of nave and aisle 74 feet; height about
ninety feet. There is to be a central tower 120 feet high, and two towers
with spires which will rise to a height of 260 feet. The Anglican
Cathedral, though not large, is a handsome building with two towers, in
fourteenth-century Gothic. The Post Office will for many years remain a
fragment of what may or may not be a handsome building. The Town Hall has
evidently been built with the idea of at all hazards making it larger
than the Melbourne Town Hall. So far it is a success. But architecturally
it is nothing more than a splendid failure--over-decorated and
ginger-bready. Curiously enough it is built upon the site of the
burial-place of the early settlement---forming a sort of Westminster
Abbey for the first settlers. There are four theatres, but none well
fitted or decorated. Palatial hospitals and asylums of course abound, but
the Parliament House is wretchedly small.

Unfortunately Sydney has very few reserves, and those few she keeps in
bad order, with the exception of the Botanical Garden, situated on an arm
of the land almost entirely surrounded by water. It is the most charming
public garden I have ever seen; inferior to that of Adelaide in detail,
but superior in the _tout ensemble_. Almost equally beautiful is the
situation of Government House, a comfortable Tudor mansion, but rather
small for purposes of entertainment.

Amongst the commercial buildings, the new head offices of the Australian
Mutual Provident Society are pre-eminent. They cost no less than £50,000.
The banks are not equal to either the Melbourne or the Adelaide banks.
But the insurance offices, warehouses, etc., though not nearly as
numerous, are quite up to the Melbourne standard in size, although for
the reasons already given they do not show to so great an advantage as
their merit deserves. Of the appearance of the shops I have already
written in my letter about Melbourne. They are not so fine as in
Melbourne nor so well stocked, and are pretty much on a level with those
in an English town of the same size.

The names of the principal streets proclaim the age of the town. George
Street and Pitt Street are the two main thoroughfares, and there are
Castlereagh, Liverpool, and William Streets, while King, Hunter, Bligh,
Macquarie, and Philip Streets, and Darlinghurst preserve the names of the
first governors. The suburbs first formed preserve the sweet-sounding
native names--Wooloomooloo, Woolahra, Coogee, Bondi. Of a later date are
Randwick, Newtown, Stanmore, Ashfield, Burwood, and Petersham--the last
four along the railway line.

The good people of Sydney do not spend their money so much upon outward
show as the Victorians. Hence the number of large houses in the suburbs
is very much smaller. But whereas the country around Melbourne for miles
is mostly flat as a pancake, the suburbs of Sydney literally revel in
beautiful building sites. For choice, there are the water frontages below
the town or up the Parramatta river, which is lined with pretty houses,
whose inhabitants come up to Sydney every morning in small river
steamers. The principal suburbs, however, are much closer to the city
than in Melbourne, being connected by steam tramways instead of railways.
New suburbs are also springing up along the railway lines, but until the
railway station is brought into the centre of the town, they can never be
nearly so populous as the Melbourne suburbs.

ADELAIDE.

I began with a comparison between Melbourne and Sydney, towns of 280,000
and 220,000 inhabitants respectively. The capital of South Australia,
Adelaide, with its 70,000, stands, of course, upon an entirely different
level; but it possesses, to an even greater degree than Sydney, all the
peculiar characteristics of a capital city. If any comparison can be made
between Adelaide and its sister capitals, it is with Melbourne rather
than with Sydney. Adelaide is a thoroughly modern town, with all the
merits and all the defects attaching to novelty. It does not possess the
spirit of enterprise to so adventurous a degree as Melbourne, but neither
does it approach to the languor of Sydney. In this respect it has
discovered a very happy middle course. There is certainly something very
provincial about the attitude of the town towards the rest of the world,
but this helps to make it the more distinctive, and conduces largely to
its progress. It 'goes without saying' that there cannot be the same
number of large buildings as in the larger cities, that their proportions
cannot be so large, that there cannot be the same facilities for business
or for pleasure. But the emulation produced by the achievements of its
big neighbours has resulted in making Adelaide a far more advanced town
for its size than either of them. Proportionately to population,
everything in Adelaide ought theoretically to be on a fourth scale of its
like in Melbourne. As a matter of fact, most things are on more than
half-scale, many on a two-thirds, and a few things, such as the Botanic
Garden, the Exchange, the Banks of South Australia and Adelaide, are
unsurpassed.

For its size, I consider Adelaide the beet-built town I know, and
certainly it is the best laid out and one of the prettiest and most
conveniently situated. It nestles, so to speak, at the foot of a range of
high hills on a plain, which extends seven miles in length to the
seashore. The approach by rail from either Port Adelaide or Glenelg is
uninteresting, but directly you get out at the station the first
impression is pleasing. The streets are broad and laid out in rectangular
blocks as in Melbourne, and the white stone used for most of the
buildings makes the town look particularly bright and lively, showing off
the bustle and traffic to advantage. In the background are the hills,
while on one side is the suburb of North Adelaide, on an incline divided
from the city by a broad sheet of artificial water, running in the bed of
the river Torrens through a half-mile deep belt of 'park-lands,' which
encircle the square mile forming the city proper, and separate it from
the suburbs.

The conception of this belt of verdure, on which none but public
buildings may be erected, dividing the working part of the town from the
residential part, has always seemed to me a masterpiece of wisdom in city
planning, and hardly less admirable are the five open reserves inside the
city which serve as its lungs. Ultimately the city proper will probably
be almost entirely reserved for business purposes. Already very few
people live within the belts who can help it, although high prices are
given for sites for residences on each of the four terraces fronting the
belts. Except that Adelaide is perfectly flat, while Melbourne is built
on two sides of a valley, Adelaide may not inaptly be described in the
words of a visitor who was returning to England by the Peninsular and
Oriental route, as 'a smaller but better Melbourne.' The style of
architecture is not quite so florid, but the extreme squatness of the
buildings is far more noticeable here. It is no merely that the buildings
are actually lower, but the look lower from being built on the flat.

Of the public buildings, the finest is the Post Office, which, though it
wants an extra story to make it dignified, is, in my opinion, preferable
to either the Melbourne or Sydney Post Offices. The new Institute, the
Anglican Cathedral, which is lofty, the Town Hall, the Supreme Court, the
Banks of South Australia, of Adelaide, and the English and Scottish Bank,
and the new vice-regal residence on the hills, are all fine buildings,
which would attract favourable notice in Melbourne or Sydney. Nominally
there are three theatres, practically only one, but that is undoubtedly
the prettiest and best in Australia. But the pride of Adelaide is its
Botanic Garden, which, though unpromisingly situated on a perfectly
level spot, with no water at hand, has been transformed, by means of
artificial water and artificial hillocks, into the prettiest garden in
the world The area is only forty acres, but every inch has been turned
to the utmost advantage, and this is really a garden, while the Sydney
Gardens--mark the plural--are more park-like, and those of Melbourne can
hardly be called gardens, in the strict sense of the word.

The drainage is defective, but the water-supply good. There is still a
great deal to be done to the footpaths, and until quite recently the
municipal arrangements were in every respect almost as bad as those of
Sydney. But an able, energetic, and liberal mayor, Mr. E. T. Smith, in
the course of two years so stirred up the citizens that pavements have
been laid down, additional gas-lights provided, the Torrens artificial
lake constructed, the squares and park-lands transformed from untidy
wildernesses into handsome oases, and the general aspect of the city
entirely transformed. I do not know that I ever saw so much done entirely
at the initiative and by the energy and persistence of a single man.

Of the shops there is not much to be said. They are not at all up to the
average of most of the institutions of the town, with the one exception
of those of the jewellers and silversmiths, the work in which is original
and artistic, throwing altogether into the shade similar shops in
Melbourne and Sydney. The cabs are all waggonettes, similar to those used
in Melbourne, but drawn by two horses instead of one. Adelaide abhors
hansoms. They exist, but are never used by respectable people, who have
come to look upon them as unholy in themselves. The tramway system is the
most complete in Australia. All the trams are drawn by horses; to such of
the suburbs as are too thinly populated to have trams large waggonettes
for the most part run in lieu of omnibuses. Adelaide is the only
Australian town in which the American system of buying land, and making a
railway to bring population to it, has been carried out. The idea was
first tried with tramways, the writer having taken some part in
originating and promoting it. Of the hotels of Adelaide, the best is the
York. It is better than the best, in Sydney, but inferior to the best two
in Melbourne.

Owing to the excellent plan on which the city is laid out, it is
surrounded on every side by suburbs at the short distance of half a mile,
connected by horse-tramways. Beyond these, however, there is the
flourishing watering-place of Glenelg at a distance of only seven miles
by train; and now that the railway has been carried into the hills, it
will not be long before large suburbs grow up in them. Wealth in South
Australia is more equally divided than in the sister Colonies. Hence
there are only a few large mansions, but comfortable six to ten-roomed
cottages abound.

HOUSES.

The inevitable 'newness' of everything cannot but strike the eye
disagreeably. This is especially noticeable in the buildings and houses,
few of which date back more than ten years. In the growth of towns, as
well as in the progress of individuals and institutions, there are three
periods to be gone through. Here the first stage is that of the log-hut.
This is succeeded by the weather-board cottage, which in turn gives place
to brick and stucco. Finally comes the stone building with its two or
three stories. The log-hut stage is of course far past. The weather-board
cottage still lingers in the poorer outskirts of Melbourne, but is
extinct in Adelaide, and fast becoming extinct in Melbourne. The choice
now is between brick and stone. In Sydney the abundance of stone on the
spot, gives it the preference; Adelaide, with less stone, builds chiefly
in brick; Melbourne, which has to get its stone from a distance, uses
hardly anything else but brick. This, of course, for private houses.
There are plenty of admirable stone buildings in Melbourne, as I have
already mentioned.

Now that the brick and stone age is firmly established the style of your
house becomes a mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. With wages
at from nine to twelve shillings a day, and with money so much dearer
than at home, the Australian has necessarily to pay a much higher rent
for his house. Excluding, of course, ground-rents, which make London
houses so expensive, I think one may fairly say that rents here are about
double the rate they are at home, and yet, _except for the rise in the
value of land_ in the cities and their suburbs, house-property is by no
means a remunerative investment. Nevertheless, there is always a great
demand for it. The colonist is very fond of living in his own house and
on his own bit of ground, and building societies and the extensive
mortgage system which prevails enable him easily to gratify this desire.
I believe that at least ninety out of every hundred house-properties in
Australia are mortgaged up to at least two-thirds of their value. Out in
the suburbs ground-rents are still low--very low indeed in comparison
with the selling value. The reason of this is, that it pays to buy a
house with a large piece of land attached, and to cut the land up and
sell it in building allotments a few years afterwards. If you can get a
fair rent for the house, the land will pay its own way.

Architecturally speaking, there is little to admire. If the public
buildings fail in this respect, the private houses have at least the
advantage over them, that for the most part they do not pretend to any
architecture at all. Many of the architects are self-taught, and have
served little or no apprenticeship to the profession. Indeed, it should
rather be called a trade, since they often are merely successful
builders, who have taken to planning and superintending the erection of
buildings, instead of erecting them themselves. This is one reason why
private houses incline rather to the practical than to the beautiful.
Another cause is the practical spirit of the colonists, which looks upon
expenditure for mere ornamental purposes as wasteful and extravagant.
Unless a man is really rich, he cannot afford the imputation of
extravagance which any architectural expenditure will bring upon him.
With his business premises it is different. Everyone understands that a
merchant spends money in ornamenting his business premises, just as a
tradesman dresses his shop-window. But the tradesman does not dress the
drawing-room window of his private house. Neither, therefore, the
merchant. Besides this, it cannot be too thoroughly understood that
Australia is before everything a money-making place, and that anything
like unremunerative expenditure with no possible chance of profit is
considered foolish in all but a man who has made his fortune. With money
so dear, and the chances of turning it over rapidly so frequent and so
remunerative, such expenditure becomes little less than a sin. Everything
ornamental not only costs twice as dear in actual money, but the money
itself is worth at least twice as much as in England.

Really large houses of the size of the manor-houses and halls which are
scattered over England in tens of thousands, can be counted in Australia
in scores. Of these but few have any architectural pretensions. Houses of
this class cannot be built under £10,000 here, whereas in England they
would cost from £4,000 to £5,000 and can be bought still cheaper. If
there is any style which colonists particularly affect, it is the
castellar. Both in the large houses I have just been speaking of, and in
the ordinary wealthy man's house which has cost him from £3,000 to
£5,000, turrets and flagstaffs abound. The passion for flagstaffs must, I
think, be derived from the fact that most of the people who build these
houses have had a long sea-journey from England, and retain a little
ozone in their composition. There is also something assertive about a
flag. A man who has a flag floating on his house is almost sure to have
some character about him. Not unfrequently, when the builder of a house
intends to live in it himself, he wishes to imitate his old home in
England, or if he has risen in the world, some particular house of the
village or town he was brought up in, which he admired in his boyhood.
The man who builds for himself at least takes care to build soundly, and
to have his rooms large and lofty.

By far the majority of houses are built by speculators; which means that
they are very badly built, run up in a tremendous hurry, constructed of
the cheapest and nastiest materials, with thin walls--in short, built for
show, and not for use. Everything looks very nice in them when you walk
round just after they are built, and it is only after you have lived in
them eighteen months that you begin to understand why the owner was in
such a hurry to sell, and would not hear of letting the house to you,
even at a good rent. You know something of this in London, but not nearly
to the same extent as here. In these speculative houses there is often
some little attempt at ornamentation--a bow-window thrown out, or the
veranda lifted to form a Gothic porch, or the drawing-room brought out
beyond the rest of the house, so as to form what is known as a T cottage,
though it should rather be a P, with a protrusion of the drawing-room
representing the straight line, and the body of the house the loop of the
P.

But the favourite type of Australian house is laid, out in an oblong
block bisected by a three to eight foot passage. The first door on one
side as you go in is the drawing-room, on the other the dining-room. Then
follow the bedrooms, etc., with the kitchen and scullery at the end of
the passage, or sometimes in a lean-to at right angles to the hinder part
of the house proper. This kind of cottage is almost universal in Adelaide
amongst the middle and upper middle classes, and invariable in the
working-class throughout Australia. In the other colonies the upper
middle classes often live in two-storied houses; i.e., ground-floor and
one floor above. Their construction is almost as simple as the cottage,
the only difference being that the bedrooms are on the upper story, and
that a pair of narrow stairs face the front-door and take up half the
passage-way, directly you get past the drawing and dining-room doom
doors. The cottage is not high enough to strike the eye, but the
squareness, or more properly the cubeness, of these two-storied houses is
appalling. They look for all the world like houses built of cards, except
that the cards are uncommonly solid. For my own part, I should never care
to live in a two-storied house again, after experiencing the comfort of
never having to go upstairs, and having all the rooms on the same floor.
At first one is prejudiced against it. I was so, until during my second
year in Australia I had to live on the third floor in Sydney. It was only
then that I realized the advantages of the simpler plan.

The strong light and heat of the sun has the effect of a window-tax in
limiting the size and number of the windows. A few French windows are to
be found in Adelaide, but the old sashes are almost universal. Of, late a
fashion has sprung up for bow-windows, which, however pretty, have here
the great disadvantage of attracting the sun unpleasantly. Shutters are
not much used. Venetian blinds are more common. On a hot summer day it is
absolutely necessary to shut all windows and draw down the blinds if you
wish to keep at all cool. About five o'clock, if there is no hot wind,
the house may be opened out.

Nearly every house that can afford the space has a veranda, which
sometimes stretches the whole way round. The rooms are usually lofty for
their size, in winter horribly cold and draughty, in summer unbearably
stuffy in small houses, the science of ventilation being of recent
introduction. Even in large establishments all the living-rooms are
almost always on the ground-floor, both on account of the fatigue of
going up and down stairs, and owing to the paucity of servants. As a
rule, the kitchens are terribly small, and in summer filled with flies.
How the poor servants manage to exist in them is more than I can
understand. It is no wonder they ask such high wages. In a few larger
houses a merciful fashion has been adopted of making the kitchen a mere
cooking galley, the cook preparing the dishes and doing all that does not
require the presence of fire in a large back-kitchen. Happily every house
has a bath-room, though it is often only a mere shed of wood or
galvanized iron put up in the back-yard. In many of the poorer households
this shed does double duty as bath-house and wash-house, or the
wash-house consists of a couple of boards, with a post to keep them up,
and a piece of netting overhead to keep the sun off. In larger houses,
both bath-rooms and wash-houses are much the same as in England. Nearly
all families do their washing, and often their ironing also, at home. Of
the sanitary arrangements, it is almost impossible to speak too strongly;
they are almost invariably objectionable and disgusting.

There are very few establishments large enough to indulge in the luxury
of a servants'-hall, and sculleries and pantries are much smaller than in
England. Even the ordinary entrance-hall of an English house has to
shrink into a mere enlargement of the passage. All over the house, in
fact, the accommodation is on a much more limited scale, unless it be
with regard to stables, which, owing to the low price of horses, are more
numerous, if less luxuriously appointed.

If the upper and middle classes suffer from want of room in their houses,
and are wont to huddle much more than people in the same position would
at home, the working-man is not much better off, although his four or
five-roomed cottage at twelve shillings to fifteen shillings a week is
more easily within his means than the five shillings a week that he paid
in England. I do not of course mean that the working-man here knows
anything of model cottages, such as are seen on large estates in England.
I should even say that during the first year or two after his arrival
there is little improvement in his habitation; but before long he
acquires a small freehold, and with the aid of a building society becomes
his own landlord. Directly he has reached this stage, an improvement is
visible in his condition. It is difficult to over-estimate the social
value of the work that has been done by building societies. In the
suburbs of the large towns you see whole townships built entirely by
these societies; every inhabitant of these townships in the course of a
few years becomes a proprietor, and the society further aids him by
making loans to him on mortgage of his property. It is the defect of
these townships that the houses are all as like one another as peas in a
pod--four-roomed squares or six-roomed oblongs built of red brick, and
with every detail exactly the same; but their plainness and similarity
does not detract from their manifest virtues.

Terraces and attached houses are universally disliked, and almost every
class of suburban house is detached and stands in its own garden. These
gardens are laid out much in the English fashion; but there is little
need of greenhouses, and unless you have water laid on to your lawn, it
is difficult to keep it green in summer. In Adelaide but few people try
to keep lawns; the summer sun is too scorching, and towards February and
March the gardens look dreadfully dried up. But on the other hand,
flowers of all kinds grow in abundance, and to a size which they rarely
attain in colder climates. The garden needs little attention beyond the
summer watering and you can get flowers all the year round. Fruit-trees
grow with wonderful rapidity and bear most abundantly.

With the aid of the hills you get several climates within a small area,
and in Adelaide especially the abundance of flowers and fruit is all that
can be desired. There is naturally some tendency to coarseness,
especially in the fruit. The price of labour makes it difficult to keep
large gardens in good order. For this reason few people keep large
gardens. Another thing that accounts for the smallness of the gardens
attached to middle and working-class houses, which are often no more than
patches, is the speculation in land. The smaller the portions into which
the speculator cuts up his building sections, the more he gets for them.
I myself on one occasion bought an eight-acre section of land in one
block for £1,100, cut it up into blocks of an eighth of an acre each, and
resold it within six weeks for a little over £2,000. This
land-speculation is quite a feature of Australian life, and at certain
periods it is difficult to lose money by it. Large gardens are generally
long leaseholds or freeholds belonging to rich people, who will not sell
during their lifetime. At their death their gardens are cut up into small
blocks and yield large profits. Nor do I think that the love of gardening
is at all common here; it is not a sufficiently exciting occupation.

FURNITURE.

I closed my last letter with an account of the way in which houses are
built here. I am now going to try to describe their contents. And perhaps
the best way to do this will be to describe a type of each class of
house, omitting all exceptions, which are necessarily numerous where so
large a field has to be covered.

We will begin at the top of the tree. Whilst the ambition of the wealthy
colonist not unfrequently finds vent in building a large house, he has
generally been brought up in too rough a school to care to furnish it
even decently. His notion of furniture begins and ends with upholstery,
and I doubt whether he ever comes to look upon this as more than things
to sit on, stand on, lie on, eat off and drink off The idea of deriving
any pleasure from the beauty of his surroundings rarely enters into his
head, and it is not uncommon to find a man who is making £5,000 a year
amply satisfied with what an Englishman with one-tenth of his income
would deem the barest necessaries. The Australian Croesus is generally
very little of a snob, though often his 'lady' has a taste for display.
When this desire for grandeur has led them to furnish expensively, they
are unable to furnish prettily, and usually feel much less comfortable in
their drawing-room, in which they never set foot except when there is
company--than when their chairs and tables were made by a working
carpenter or with their own hands out of a few deal boards.

One or two millionaires have had upholsterers out from Gillow's and
Jackson and Graham's to furnish their houses in the latest and most
correct fashion, and many colonists who go on a trip to England bring
back with them drawing and dining room suites; but even then there is an
entire want of individuality about the Australian's house--which is the
more remarkable seeing how much his individuality has been brought out by
his career, and shows itself in his general actions and opinions. He may
know how to dogmatize on theology and politics, but when he gets down to
furniture he confesses that his eye is out of focus. The furniture
imported or (in Melbourne) made by the large upholsterers is, with few
exceptions, more gorgeous than pretty; whence one may reasonably infer
that the taste of their customers--when they have any--is better suited
by the grandiose than the artistic. But most of the expensively furnished
houses show plainly that the upholsterer has been given _carte blanche_
to do what he will. Look at his shop-window, and you may make a shrewd
guess at his customer's drawing-room.

Nor is the furniture universal in Australia, as one would naturally
suppose, after the style of that in Italy and the South of France. The
frowsy carpets and heavy solid chairs of England's cold and foggy climate
reign supreme beneath the Austral sun. The Exhibitions have done
something towards reforming our domestic interiors, but it will be a long
time before the renaissance of art as applied to households, which
appears to be taking place in England, makes its way here in any
considerable force.

But instead of generalizing, it is time we should go through Muttonwool's
house room by room. On entering the drawing-room the first thing that
strikes the eye is the carpet, with a stiff set pattern large enough to
knock you down, and of a rich gaudy colour. You raise your eyes--find
opposite them the regulation white marble mantelpiece, more or less
carved, and a gilt mirror, which we will hope is not protected from the
flies by green netting. Having made a grimace, you sit down upon one of
the chairs. There are nine in the room besides the sofa--perhaps an
ottoman--and you can take your choice between the 'gent's' armchair, the
lady's low-chair, and the six high ones. If they are not in their
night-shirts you can examine the covering--usually satin or perhaps
cretonne. The pattern is unique, being, I should think, specially
manufactured for the colonial market. Bright hues prevail. Occasional
chairs have only lately been introduced, and the whole suite is in
unison, though harmony with the carpet has been overlooked, or rather
never thought of, the two things having been chosen separately, and
without any idea that it would be an improvement if they were to match.

As for the make of the chairs, they are to be found in plenty of English
middle-class drawing-rooms even now. The shape may be named the
'deformed.' The back is carved out into various contortions of a
horse-shoe, with a bar across the middle which just catches you in the
small of the back, and is a continual reproach if you venture to lean
against it. The wood of which the chairs are made is mahogany, walnut, or
cedar. The large round or oval table which stands in the middle of the
room is of the same wood, and so are the card-table, the Davenport, the
chiffonier, and that Jacob's-ladder-like what-not in the corner. In some
houses the upholsterer has stuffed the room with useless tables. Of
course there is a fender and fire-irons, and probably a black
doleful-looking grate, which during two-thirds of the year is stuffed
with paper shavings of all the colours of the rainbow and several others
which good Mother Nature forgot to put into it. On the chimney-piece is a
Louis XVI. clock and a pair of ornaments to match. A piano, tune
immaterial, is a _sine quâ non_ even in a middle-class house, but when
Muttonwool has got all these things--in short, paid his upholsterer's
bill--he thinks a ten-pound note should cover the rest of his
drawing-room furniture. Household gods are terribly deficient, and it
would not be difficult to fancy yourself in a lodging-house. There may be
a few odds and ends picked up on the overland route, and a set of
stereotyped ornaments bought at an auction sale or sent out as 'sundries'
in a general cargo; but of _bric-à-brac_, in the usual acceptation of
the term, there is little or none.

As for the pictures, they are altogether abominable. Can you imagine a
man with £5,000 a year (or £500, for that matter) covering his walls with
chromos? The inferior kinds of these 'popularizers of art,' as the papers
call them, have an immense sale here. Even when a wealthy man has been
told that it is his duty to buy pictures, the chances are that he will
attend an auction and pick up rubbish at low prices, rubbing his hands
over what he considers a good bargain; or if he wants to tell his
visitors how much he gave for his pictures he gets mediocre work with a
name on it. A recent number of the _Adelaide Punch_ has a caricature
entitled ''Igh Art in Adelaide,' which though of course a caricature, is
worth quoting as showing how the wind blows: 'Tallowfat, pointing to a
picture in a dealer's shop, _loq._: "What's the price of that there
thing with the trees and the 'ut in the distance?" Dealer: "That, sir!
that's a gem by Johnstone" (a local artist of some merit)--"twenty
guineas, sir." Tallowfat: "Twenty tomfools!" "What d'ye take me for? Why,
I bought a picture twice that size, with much more colour in it, and a
frame half as thick again, and I only paid ten for it! Show us something
with more style."' A few men have good pictures, but I hardly know anyone
who has any good engravings. Muttonwool can see no difference between a
proof before letters and the illustrations from the newspapers, which may
be seen pasted on the walls of every small shop and working-man's
cottage. That there is a taste for pictures here is undeniable. But that
is common to every child till it knows how to read, and will want a deal
of educating before it can be called 'art.'

We will now go into the dining-room, which is probably the best furnished
room in the house. It is not easy to make a dining-room look out of joint
provided you are not particular about the cost, though there is a very
wide margin between the decent and the handsome. The upholstery is much
the same as in an ordinary upper middle-class house in England--sofa,
sideboard, chiffonier, two easy and eight or ten upright chairs in cedar
frames and covered with leather, marble mantelpiece and clock, Louis XVI.
glass, and a carpet which is at any rate better than the drawing-room
one. If there is a breakfast-room it is a smaller edition of the
dining-room. The study is chiefly remarkable for the absence of books, or
for an inappropriateness to the owner's tastes which smacks of a job-lot.
The bedrooms are disappointing. Pictures and knick-knacks rarely extend
beyond the 'company' precincts. Muttonwool would think it a waste of good
bawbees to put pretty things in the bedrooms, where no one but the family
will see them. In these rooms he is _au naturel_, and with all his
good-nature and genuineness he is rather a rough fellow. The brute is
expelled from the drawing-room, but he jumps in again at the bedroom
window. As for the servants' rooms, anything is good enough for them.
Probably the master himself was contented with still less in his younger
days. The kitchen is ordinarily very poorly provided with utensils.
Ranges and stoves are only found in the wealthier houses, the usual
cooking apparatus being a colonial oven--a sort of box with fire above
and below, which is very convenient for burning wood, the usual fuel
throughout Australia.

I think this is about as much as need be said about an average wealthy
Australian's house; but before going on to describe middle-class homes, I
must ask you to remember that all large colonial houses are not furnished
on this wise. There are a large number of people in Australia, and
especially in Victoria, who have as good an idea of how to furnish as
other middle-class Englishmen--though perhaps that is not saying much.
But in articles of this kind I am obliged to strike an average. The type
of house I have described is the most common. You must leave a marain on
either side of it according to the education and tastes of the owner. And
here let me note that in Melbourne houses are certainly more expensively,
and perhaps better furnished than in any of the other towns. The
Victorians have a much greater love of show than any of their
fellow-Australians. Where a Sydney man spends £400 on his furniture you
may safely predict that a Melbourner will spend £600. Consequently the
furniture establishments in the latter city are much superior to those in
the former, and that although, owing to the enormous duty-25 per
cent.--but little English furniture is imported into Victoria.

Let us now hie us to humbler abodes, and visit an eight-roomed cottage,
inhabited by a young solicitor whose income is from £500 to £1000 a year.
Here the whole drawing-room suite is in cretonne or rep, and comprises
the couch, six chairs, and lady's and gent's easy-chairs, which we saw
before at Muttonwool's. The carpet is also ditto. The glass, ornaments,
etc., are similar, but on a smaller scale; and if there are any pictures
on the wall they are almost bound to be chromos, for whilst Croesus
sometimes invests in expensive paintings, the middle-class, who cannot
afford to give from £100 upwards for a picture, will make no effort to
obtain something moderately good, such as can be easily obtained in
England for a very small outlay. The gasalier is bronze instead of glass.
The real living-room of the house is the dining-room, which is therefore
the best furnished, and on a tapestry carpet are a leather couch, six
balloon-back carved chairs, two easy-chairs, a chiffonier, a side-table,
and a cheap chimney-glass. In the best bedroom the bedstead is a tubular
half-tester, the toilet-ware gold and white, the carpet again tapestry.
Throughout the house the furniture is made of cedar. The kitchen is
summarily disposed of; Biddy has to content herself with d table,
dresser, safe, pasteboard and rolling-pin, and a couple of chairs. Her
bedroom furniture is even more scanty--a paillasse on trestles, a chair,
a half-crown looking-glass, an old jug and a basin on a wooden table.
Even in the houses of the wealthy poor Biddy is very badly treated in
this respect. In Muttonwool's house, if he keeps two servants, they both
sleep in one room, and not improbably share the same basin. Servants are
undoubtedly troublesome to a degree in Australia, but it is not
altogether a satisfactory feature in colonial life that the provision
made for their comfort is literally nil.

Having seen the £600 a year cottage it is almost needless to visit the
£300 and £400, belonging to clerks and the smaller shopkeepers. The style
is the same, but the quantity and quality inferior. For instance, the
drawing-room carpet is tapestry instead of Brussels; the dining-room
furniture is covered with horse-hair instead of leather, and so on. We
will go into the next cottage--less pretentious-looking and a little
smaller. The rent is twelve shillings a week, and it belongs to a
carpenter in good employ. Here there is no drawing-room, but the parlour
aspires to comfort quite undreamt of by an English tradesman. Our old
friends the horse-hair cedar couch, the gent's and lady's chairs together
with four balloon high chairs, turn up again. There is a four-foot
chiffonier, a tapestry carpet, a gilt chimney-glass, a hearthrug, a
bronze fender and fire-irons, and a round table with turned pillar and
carved claws. In the parents' bedroom are a half-tester bedstead with
coir-fibre or woollen flock mattress, two cane chairs, washstand,
toilet-table, glass and ware, towel-horse, chest of drawers, and a couple
of yards of bedside carpet. The two youngest children sleep in this room,
and three or four others in the second bedroom, where the bedsteads are
less showy and the ware very inferior. The carpet is replaced by china
matting. The chest of drawers does duty as a toilet-table, and there are
of course no such luxuries as towel-horses. Yet, take it all in all,
Chips has much to be thankful for.

With labour so dear as it is here, it is wonderful to think that a
working-man can furnish, and furnish comfortably, a four-roomed cottage
for £27; and yet this is what has recently been done in Melbourne by my
friend Hornyhand, who is a common labourer, earning only eight to nine
shillings a day, and paying about as much a week for rent. He is really
uncommonly well off, everything in his house being brand-new; and yet, as
he tells me, he is absolutely at the root of the honest social tree--the
worst paid of the working-classes. I think it worth while to subjoin his
bill. He certainly has not gone in for luxuries, but then he is of a
frugal mind. If he wanted it, his house could be as well furnished as
Chips'; but he doesn't see any object in wasting money on that kind of
thing, and is content with little:

Parlour.                                         £ s. d.

Cedar polished couch, covered with horse-hair    2 10 0
Four cane-seat chairs, each 7s. 6d.              1 10 0
Cedar polished table, 3 ft. 6 in., on claws      1 10 0
Maple rocking-chair, with elbows                 0 17 6
Carpet                                           1  5 0
Hearthrug, 8s. 6d. fender, 9s. irons, 6s. 6d.    1  4 0

Bedroom.

French bedstead, 4 ft. 6 in. by 6 ft. 6 in.      1 15 0
Pair paillasses                                    12 6
Woollen flock mattrass                           1  0 0
Woollen flock bolster and 2 pillows                 8 0
Washstand, and rail attached                       10 6
Toilet table, to match                             10 6
Toilet glass, 14 in. by 10 in.                      8 6
2 cane-scat chairs (Albert), 6s. each              12 0
4 yards matting at 9d.                              3 0
Toilet-ware, six pieces                            12 6

Second Bedroom.

2 French bedsteads, 3 ft. by 6 ft. 6 in. at 30s. 3  0 0
4 paillasses, at 10s. per pair 1 0 0
2 woollen flock mattrasses, at 16. 3d. each      1 12 6
2 bolsters, flock, at 4s. 6d. each                  9 0
2 pillows, flock, at 3s. each                       6 0
Toilet chest of drawers
(to serve for toilet table), cedar               2  5 0
Toilet glass, 14 in. by 10 in.                      7 0
Washstand, 2 ft. 6 in.                             12 0
Wash, etc., 6 pieces                               12 6

Kitchen.

Deal table, turned legs, varnished                10 6
2 wood chairs, each 4s. 6d.                        9 0
Safe in Kauri pine                                10 6
Pasteboard and rolling-pin                         4 0

                                              £27  7 0

Note.--That if he had not had two children to provide for in a second
bedroom, nor indulged in the luxury of a chest of drawers, the whole of
his furnishing would only have cost him £17 3s.

Before closing this letter, a word as to what may be called the
accessories of the household. But few families have any large quantity of
plate, and electro has almost entirely superseded silver; metal is not
common for dishes, and is quite unknown for plates. Nor is the crockery
at all a strong point even in the wealthiest houses. In the shops it is
almost impossible to get anything satisfactory in this line; and until
the exhibitions, nine Australians out of ten had no idea what was meant
by hand-painted china. The difference between china and earthenware is,
it goes almost without saying, little if at all appreciated, much less
that between hand-painted and stamped ware. The display of cut-glass at
the exhibitions was almost as great a revelation to colonists as that of
porcelain; hitherto all middle-class and most wealthy households have
been contented with the commonest stuff. Table-cloths and napkins are
also very second-rate, and sheets are almost invariably of calico.

SERVANTS.

That servants are the plague of life seems to be an accepted axiom
amongst English ladies of the upper middle class. When I hear them
discussing their grievances over their afternoon tea, I wish them no
worse fate than to have the management of an Australian household for a
week. It is not every Englishwoman whose peace of mind would survive the
trial. Many a young English wife have I seen unhappy in her married life
in the colonies, mainly on account of her domestics. And yet I doubt
whether the colonial mistress makes as much fuss about her real wrongs as
the English one about her imaginary grievances. Of course she can, if
drawn out, tell you enough ridiculous stories about her servants to fill
a number of _Punch_; but if they are only fools she is well content, and
it is only when she is left servantless for two or three days that she
waxes wroth.

Where mistresses are many and servants are few, it goes almost without
saying that large establishments are out of the question. Given equal
incomes, and the English mistress has twice as many servants as the
Australian, and what is more, twice as competent ones. Even our friend
Muttonwool only has six coachman, boy, cook, housemaid, nurse, and
parlourmaid. I don't suppose there are a hundred households in all
Australia which keep a butler pure and simple, though there must be
several thousand with what is generically known as a man-servant, who
gets twenty-five shillings a week, all found. A coachman's wages are on
the average about the same. The 'boy' gets ten shillings. Man-cooks are
rare. A decent female cook, who ranks out here as first-class, earns from
fifteen shillings to a pound a week. For this sum she is supposed to know
something about cooking; yet I have known one in receipt of a weekly
guinea look with astonishment at a hare which had been sent to her master
as a present, and declare that it was 'impossible to make soup out of
that thing.' After a little persuasion she was induced to try to make
hare-soup after Mrs. Beeton's recipe, but the result was such as to try
the politeness of her master's visitors. This lack of decent cooks is
principally due to the lack of establishments large enough to keep
kitchenmaids. Would-be cooks have no opportunity of acquiring their art
by training from their superiors; they gain their knowledge by
experiments on their employers' digestions; never staying long in one
place, they learn to make some new dishes at each house they go to, and
gradually rise in the wages-scale.

Directly you come to incomes below a thousand a year, the number of
servants is often reduced to a maid-of-all-work, more or less competent
according to her wages, which run from seven to fifteen shillings a week.
At the former price she knows absolutely nothing; at the latter something
of everything. She cooks, washes, sweeps, dusts, makes the beds, clears
the baths, and answers the, door. All is grist that comes to her mill;
and if she is Jill-of-all-trades and mistress of none, one must admit
that an English-bred servant would not be one quarter so suitable to
colonial requirements. Of course she is independent, often even cheeky,
but a mistress learns to put up with occasional tantrums, provided the
general behaviour and character are good. When we were first out here we
used to run a-muck with our servants about once a week; but now we find
it better to bear the ills we have than fly to others which we know not
of. Our present Lizzie is impertinent to a degree when reproved; but then
she can cook decently, and she is the first decent cook we have had since
we have been out here. When you have lived on colonial fare for a few
months, a good plain dinner covers a multitude of sins.

Unfortunately, four-fifths of our servants are Irish--liars and dirty.
These Irish are less impertinent than the colonials; but if you do get
hold of a well trained colonial, she is worth her weight in gold on
account of her heterogeneity. Your Irish immigrant at eight and ten
shillings a week has as often as not never been inside any other
household than her native hovel, and stares in astonishment to find that
you don't keep a pig on your drawing-room sofa. On entering your house,
she gapes in awe of what she considers the grandeur around her, and the
whole of her first day's work consists of ejaculating 'Lor' and
'Goodness!' We once had a hopeful of this kind who, after she had been
given full instructions as to how a rice-pudding was to be made, sat down
and wept bitterly for half an hour, till--her mistress having told her to
'bake'--the happy thought struck her to put a dish full of rice in the
oven, _sans_ milk _sans_ eggs, _sans_ everything. Another Biddy, engaged
by a friend of ours, having to make a yeast-cake, put it under her
bed-clothes 'just to plump it a bit.' A third, having been given a
bill-of-fare for the day, put soup, meat, and pudding all into one pot,
and served them up _au pot-pourri_.

But if Biddy is trying to the patience, her stupidity is to a mistress
accustomed to English ways almost more bearable than the
'go-as-you-please'--if I may borrow a phrase from the new American
athletic contests--of the colonial young lady, who comes to be engaged in
the most elegant of dresses, bows as she enters the room, seats herself,
and smilingly remarks, that she has heard that Mrs. So-and-So is wanting
a 'girl.' After a little discussion about the work, privileges, etc., and
upon the production of some written certificates--it is almost impossible
to obtain personal references, and if it were possible you could not rely
upon them--the engagement is made. The mistress requires a solemn promise
that the servant will come on a certain day, and as often as not the day
arrives without her. Our young lady has been round to a number of
mistresses and 'priced' their places; she will not wilfully put you in a
quandary, but if, after having engaged herself to you, she hears of
another situation where there is less work or more wages, she takes it in
preference, and leaves you to manage as best you can. Even when you have
got her and found her suitable, you can never tell at what moment she
will be pleased to be off 'Tuppence more and up goes the donkey!'--an
inconvenience which is felt much more here, where there is probably only
one servant in the house, than it would be in England.

But if it were only higher wages which tempted servants away the remedy
would be easy; a few pounds more a year would be cheerfully paid for the
convenience of a continuity of one's household arrangements. In one year
we have had ten servants. As there were no children, the place was an
easy one; but that seemed to make little difference. At first we kept
two, but they did nothing but quarrel; the cook left us on this account.
We took our new cook simply because she happened to be a friend of the
housemaid; but before long we found that it was out of the frying-pan
into the fire: the first two had quarrelled 'because there wasn't
sufficient work for two to do;' the second pair played together so much
that they never did any work. We banished them both, and tried keeping
only one servant, which many people had assured us would prove more
comfortable. So far they were right. Hitherto my wife's time had chiefly
been taken up with looking after the servants, to see that they did their
work; now peace reigned in the house. We gave our maid-of-all-work
fifteen shillings a week; we thought we had found a real treasure, and
for a month everything went on wheels. But at the end of that time, just
when she was getting accustomed to our ways and we to hers, Sarah gives a
week's notice; she had no fault to find with her mistress, but the place
was too dull. We offered two shillings a week extra but in vain. Our next
stayed six weeks; her reason for leaving was that she did not approve of
the back-yard. Number six stayed for three months; she was very nearly
leaving at the end of the first fortnight, but we won her heart by giving
her young man free access to the kitchen from 9 o'clock to 10.30 every
evening. Even then, however, she found the place too dull. Number eight
stayed two months; she left avowedly because she did not care to stop too
long in one place. The ninth remained only a fortnight. She left because
we objected to her staying out after eleven o'clock at night, although we
gave her three nights out a week after half-past eight.

When there are children in a middle-class family, a nurse-girl is
generally, but by, no means always, kept. Hers is the lowest of all the
branches of service, and is only taken by a young girl just going out
into the world. Trained nurses, such as are common at home, are in great
demand, and almost unobtainable. They can earn a pound a week easily, and
at such wages a man whose income only runs into three figures is forced
to put up with a nurse-girl. She undertakes no responsibility, her duties
being confined to carrying the baby and screaming at the other children
if they attempt to do themselves any bodily harm. If you wish to
understand what the average nurse-girl is like, you have but to walk
through any of the public gardens; you will see babies without number
left in the blazing sun, some hanging half-way out of their
perambulators, others sucking large, painted 'lollies' or green apples.
The elder children, if they are unruly, are slapped and sent off to play
by themselves, while the nurse-girls hold a confab on a neighbouring
bench. Not that these girls are necessarily bad, but they lack the
supervision and training of a head-nurse; they have been taught to look
upon nursing as derogatory, and never stay long enough as nurses to get
an experience in handling children. A few months of this, the lowest
stage of servant-galdom, and then they pass up into the maid-of-all-work
class. Thus it is that many mothers prefer undertaking the duties of
nurse themselves, and devote themselves to their children often at the
expense of their husbands, and certainly of all social relations.

Colonial servants are much too fond of change for change's sake ever to
stay long in one situation. A month's character is a sure guarantee for
another place, and only a week's notice is required on either side before
leaving. Hence servants are engaged and paid by the week; they do not
expect any presents or perquisites, and it is not the custom to make them
any allowance for beer. On the other hand, they will not stand being
allowanced for tea, sugar, butter, or anything of the kind, and as a rule
they fare in exactly the same style as their masters. Every other Sunday
afternoon and evening, one evening every week, and occasional public
holidays, are the customary outings, though we found it expedient to
allow a good many more.

The great redeeming-point about the servant-girl is the power she
acquires, of getting through a large and multifarious quantity of work.
She has frequently to do the whole house-work, cooking, washing, and
ironing for a family of six or seven, and unless the mistress or her
daughters are particularly helpful, it is out of all reason to expect
that any of these things can be well done. Of course there are some good
servants, but, unfortunately for their employers, the butchers and bakers
generally have a keen eye for such, arguing with great justice that a
good servant is likely to make a good wife.

The greater part of the high wages which servants get is spent on dress.
If ever they condescend to wear their mistress's left-off clothes, it is
only for work in the house; but the trouble they take to copy the exact
fashion and cut of their mistress's clothes is very amusing. One girl we
had frankly asked my wife to allow her to take a dress she admired to her
dressmaker, in order that she might have one made up like it. Whilst
girls in the upper and middle classes are very handy with their fingers,
and often make up their own hats and dresses, the servant-class despise
to do this, and almost invariably employ milliners, who often cheat them
dreadfully, knowing that they appreciate a hat or a dress much according
to the price they have paid for it, and the amount of show it makes. In
hats and bonnets this is specially noticeable; I have often seen our
servants with hats or bonnets on, which cannot have cost them less than
three or four pounds.

The shortest and upon the whole the best way to get a servant is by going
to one of the numerous registry offices. Some of these exist merely to
palm off bad servants upon you; but there are always offices of good
reputation, which will not recommend a girl they know absolutely nothing
about.

The needlewoman is little in vogue here; but as nearly everyone washes at
home, washerwomen are plentiful; their wages run from four to five
shillings a day, according to their capabilities, food being of course
included.

In spite of constant shipments from England, servants are always at a
premium, and I need scarcely point out what an excellent opening these
colonies afford for women-servants. Unfortunately, but a very small
proportion of the daughters of the poorer colonial working-class will go
into service. For some inexplicable reason, they turn up their noses at
the high wages and comparatively light work offered, and prefer to
undertake the veriest drudgery in factories for a miserable pittance. At
a recent strike in a large shirt-making factory in Melbourne, it came out
that a competent needlewoman could not make more than eighteen shillings
a week even by working overtime, and that the general average earnings of
a factory girl were only eleven to thirteen shillings a week. But so
great is the love of independence in the colonial girl, that she prefers
hard work and low wages in order to be able to enjoy freedom of an
evening. It is in vain that the press points out that girls whose parents
do not keep servants are accustomed to perform the same household duties
in their own homes that are required of them in service; that work which
is not degrading at home cannot be degrading in service; and that they
will be the better wives for the knowledge of household work which they
acquire in service. They might as well preach to the winds; and there are
more applications for employment in shops and factories than there is
work for, whilst mistresses go begging for lady-helps. There is a sad
side to this picture as regards the social condition of the colonies, in
addition to the inconvenience to people who keep servants. The girls who
go into shops and factories, and have their evenings to themselves,
necessarily undergo a great deal of temptation, and it is undeniable that
they are not at all delivered from evil. The subject is out of keeping
with these letters, but unless some means can be found to reconcile
colonial girls to service, I fear an evil is growing up in our midst
which is likely to be even more baneful in its effects upon the community
than the corresponding tendency to 'larrikinism' amongst colonial youths.

Since writing the above, an article on the subject has appeared in the
Melbourne _Argus_ which is worth quoting in _extenso_:

'We have undertaken to consider whether anything can be done to overcome
the unwillingness which nearly all Australian girls exhibit to enter
domestic service. There is an abundant supply of female labour in the
colony, but unfortunately it is not distributed in the way that would be
most advantageous to the community and beneficial to the women
themselves. While household servants can scarcely be had for love or
money, the clothing factories are crowded with seamstresses, who are
content to work long hours at what are very much like starvation wages.
How is this? We have shown that there is nothing in domestic work which
any true woman need consider degrading; that the most refined and highly
educated ladies have in all ages considered themselves properly employed
when busy about household affairs; that servants have quite as many
opportunities of forming matrimonial connections as factory girls, and
that their training fits them to become much better, and therefore far
happier wives. We have no doubt that all this, or at least the greater
part, would be admitted by the seamstresses themselves: but nevertheless
the fact remains that to domestic service they will not go. There is a
feeling in existence amongst them that in some way or other household
labour is menial occupation, and that to undertake it is to lose caste in
the class to which they belong. We may call this fantastic idea "vanity"
or "false pride," or what we will; but that does not do anything to
banish it, or to render it less potent for mischief. Seeing that so much
is at stake--that employers are clamouring for servants, and that women
are sadly in want of some occupation which would lessen competition and
raise wages in the sewing business--it is evident that society is deeply
interested in getting rid of the ridiculous notion. As a first step
towards that desirable consummation, let us endeavour to analyse the
impression which exists in the minds of those who turn their backs upon
household duties, and with their eyes open devote themselves to a
laborious and underpaid occupation.

'A correspondent ( _The Argus_, December 16) informs us that observation
and the remarks he has heard made by factory girls have led him to think
that there are three serious objections which the seamstresses have to
domestic service. One of these is--"The idea of degradation, attached to
the position of a 'slavey' in the minds of the lower classes themselves."
As we have seen that there is nothing degrading in the work itself which
servants are called upon to do, how comes it that its performance is
considered less honourable than sewing or serving in a shop? The notion
must take its rise in the conditions under which domestic service is
rendered. The sewing girl or the shop-woman has certain business hours,
outside of which she is as independent as her employer, and as little
amenable to control. The household servant, on the other hand, is under
discipline, and liable to be called on to do this, that, or the other
during every hour of the twenty-four. From the time she gets up in the
morning to the moment she goes to bed at night, she has no hour which of
right she can reckon on as her own. If she wishes to go out she must ask
permission; if she wants to receive a friend, she cannot rely on being
left undisturbed. As a matter of fact, servants in this colony enjoy a
very large measure of liberty, and those who are worth their salt very
seldom have to complain of want of consideration or indulgence. If they
do not meet with proper treatment, they can easily find situations where
more regard is had to their feelings and comfort. But the thought that
the leisure and freedom they enjoy is due in a great measure to favour,
and not to right, is the fly in the ointment of the domestic's lot which
renders it distasteful to many women, and which causes it to be looked
down on by those who exist under far less favourable conditions. It seems
to us that it is the want of some definite respite from liability to work
which constitutes the "slavery" of which our correspondent speaks. If we
are right in our supposition, then it is evident that employers have it
in their power to take away the reproach from domestic servitude, by
assimilating the conditions of household employment to those which attach
to industrial occupations. Why should not servants have regular hours of
work, outside which they would be absolutely free to go where, or to do
as they please, without asking permission or fearing interruption? If
such arrangements were to become customary, we can hardly doubt that the
prejudice against domestic service would die out. The attractions of
higher wages, equal freedom, better board, and more comfortable lodging
would soon do their work.

'It may be said that such a change as we propose would entirely alter the
relations between mistresses and their "helps." No doubt it would. But we
may ask why the relations between mistresses and servants should continue
as they were in semi-feudal times, when the relations of other classes of
society to each other have been resettled on an entirely different basis?
Nearly all sorts of service now are matters of simple contract, and we
know of no reason why domestic engagements should not be regulated in the
same way. It would be better for employers to have a plentiful supply of
efficient servants liable to work eight or ten hours per diem, than a
scanty stock of discontented women whose services they can command day
and night. With altered relations, we should soon have a change of
demeanour on both sides. The correspondent we have quoted says that
another of the things which prevents seamstresses from "going into
service," is "the over-anxiety of mistresses that servants should know
their position." In a democratic country like this, where young people
are brought up with the idea that one man or woman is as good as another,
we can easily understand that any assertion of superiority on the part of
employers, or attempt to exact an outward show of deference, is very
galling to undisciplined minds. Those who have been accustomed to be
waited on from childhood upwards, are never very careful to insist on
those forms and modes of address which at one time servants invariably
adopted. As long as they are well served, they are content to sacrifice
something to the modern spirit of equality. It is those who have risen in
the social scale late in life who are always standing on their dignity
and exacting homage. If the latter class would moderate its pretensions,
a stumbling-block would be removed from the entrance to domestic service.
We already have several agencies for training servants; could they not
add to their duties the work of training mistresses in the ideas we have
set forth, and in any others which are likely to diminish the distaste of
Australian girls for household work? If they would take the matter in
hand in a practical way, and familiarise the public mind with the notion
of limited domestic labour, they would, we believe, do much to promote
the comfort of home life in Victoria, and to improve the position of
female labour.'

FOOD.

Generally speaking, food in Australia is cheaper and more plentiful than
in England, but poorer in quality. Adulteration is, of course, as yet
unknown, or but very little known, for the simple reason that it costs
more to adulterate than to provide the genuine article. The working-man's
food here is also immeasurably better and cheaper. Mutton he gets almost
for the asking, and up-country almost without it. Bread is only 1¼d. to
2d. a pound, and all the necessaries of life are good, healthy, and
fairly cheap. But the richer man, who asks for more than soundness in the
quality of his food, finds himself worse off than in London. Meat of the
same quality as he gets at his club in Pall Mall is not to be got in
Collins Street for love or money. The flour is the best in the world, and
the bread wholesome and sweet; but the toothsomeness of German and French
bakers is not to be had, and the finest qualities of flour are all
shipped to England instead of being used here. The dearness of labour
makes it impossible to give the same care to the cultivation of fruit and
vegetables; and though these are cheap enough, the delicate flavour of
Convent Garden is hardly compensated by their superior freshness. In
short, our food is somewhat coarse, albeit wholesome enough.

Up-country the meat is excellent; but in the towns it is not, as a rule,
so good as in England, as the sheep and cattle have often to be driven
long distances before they are slaughtered. Prices vary according to the
different towns, seasons, and qualities from 6d. to 2½d. a lb. for beef,
and from 4d. to l½d. for mutton. Pork is from 9d. to 7d.; veal from 8d.
to 4d. All kinds of fruit and vegetables, except Brussels sprouts, are
cheap and plentiful. I will quote one or two prices at random from a
market-book: artichokes, l½d. a lb.; tomatoes, 2d. a lb.; beetroot and
cabbages, 1s. 6d. a dozen; potatoes, 6s. a cwt. During the season fruit
is very cheap. Splendid Muscatel grapes can be bought in Adelaide from
ld. to 2d. a lb.; peaches, 3d. a dozen; apricots, 2d. a dozen;
raspberries, 5d. a lb.; cherries, 2d. a lb.; strawberries, 4d.; plums
almost for nothing; but by far the best is the passion-fruit. Neither
vegetables nor fruit, as sold in the markets and shops, are as good as
those you buy in England. The inferior quality is due to the
grow-as-you-please manner in which the fruit is cultivated, pruning and
even the most ordinary care being neglected; but you can get as
fine-flavoured fruit here as anywhere, and to taste grapes in perfection
you must certainly go to Adelaide.

Of course meat is the staple of Australian life. A working-man whose
whole family did not eat meat three times a day would indeed be a
phenomenon. High and low rich and poor, all eat meat to an incredible
extent, even in the hottest weather. Not that they know how to prepare it
in any delicate way, for to the working and middle, as well as to most of
the wealthy classes, cooking is an unknown art. The meat is roast or
boiled, hot or cold, sometimes fried or hashed. It is not helped in mere
slices, but in good substantial hunks. In everything the colonist likes
quantity. You can hardly realize the delight of 'tucking in' to a dish of
fruit at a dinner-party. I once heard a colonist say, 'I don't like your
nasty little English slices of meat: _we_ want something that we can put
our teeth into.' Imagine the man's misery when dessert came on the table,
and he was asked whether he would take a _slice_ of pear! Vegetables are
for the most part despised, though the thoroughly old English dish of
greens remains in favour, and potatoes are largely eaten.

Tea may fairly claim to be the national beverage. A large majority of the
population drink it with every meal, and you find cases of this even in
the metropolitan middle classes. With them, however, it is more usual to
drink beer with their mid-day meal, and to have meat-tea in the evening.
This practice extends through the upper and middle classes, and into many
wealthy houses. Next to tea may be ranked beer, English or colonial,
which I have come to think is a necessity to the English-speaking races.
But no colonist drinks much at meals. He prefers to quench his thirst at
every opportunity that may occur between. In all country towns, if you go
to see a man on business, out comes the whisky-bottle. If you meet an old
friend, his first greeting is, 'Come and have a nobbler!' No bargain can
be concluded without it. If it is a warm day, you must have a nobbler to
quench your thirst; if it is freezing, to keep the cold out. There is no
trade at which more fortunes have been made here than the publican's. The
most exclusive and the most out-at-elbows find a common meeting-place in
the public-house; although it is only fair to say that the custom of
'shouting,' as it is called, is going--if it has not gone--out of fashion
amongst the better classes in the capital cities. Beer, or more
frequently spirits, form the favourite 'nobbler,' the price of which
varies from fourpence to eightpence in Sydney and Adelaide according to
the drink. In Melbourne all drinks are sixpence. There is a current
story--which I know to be true--of two well-known colonials, who, on
landing from the P. and 0. steamer at Southampton, immediately entered
the first public-house, and asked for 'two nobblers of English ale.'
Having drunk the ale, which was highly approved of, one of them put down
a shilling, and was walking off, when the barmaid recalled him, and
offered eightpence change. 'By G----!' was their simultaneous
exclamation, 'this is a land to live in, where you can get two nobblers
of English ale for fourpence! let us drink our shilling's-worth.'

Like their American cousins, the Australians are of opinion that there is
no liquid worthy to be mentioned by the side of 'champagne.' It requires
some education to acquire a taste for claret. To the uninitiated sherry
and port are chiefly palatable for their spirituousness; but everyone is
born with a taste for champagne. It does not follow that everyone knows
what constitutes good champagne. No merchant or lawyer, or anyone whose
income is over £500 a year, dare give a party without champagne. It is
champagne which gives _ton_. For this purpose it need not be very good.

The _sine quibus non_ are a well-known brand and a 'gold-top.' Moët's or
Roëderer's _carte d'or_ is the party-goer's criterion of the success of
the entertainment. As soon as he sees the label, he swallows the wine,
good or bad--more probably bad, for most champagnes, like all other
wines, are 'specially prepared for the Australian market,' and you know
what that means. 'Body,' or what captious folk would call 'heaviness,' is
the first condition of good wine to the colonial taste. The lower middle
and lower classes also like it sweet; but of course a man who drinks any
quantity of wine prefers it dry. Besides the champagne drunk for show,
there is--in spite of a 20s. a dozen duty--a large quantity consumed in
the way of nobblers, and at dinner by wealthy men. When a man has made a
lucky speculation, or has just got a large order, he treats his friends
to a bottle of champagne.

I have not seen burgundy half a dozen times since I have been here. The
old colonist finds claret thin and sour; but the younger generation are
beginning to take to it, although there is no wine harder to obtain here
than claret. Nine-tenths of what one buys is adulterated. His knowledge
of _crûs_ being naturally limited, the colonist likes to see on his wine
a fine label, one which makes the quality of the wine easily
comprehensible to him. Thus the most successful claret sold here is
divided according to degrees of nastiness into five ranks, and you ask
for So-and-So's No. 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, irrespective of vintage or year. 'Bon
ordinaire' is of course unobtainable, but you can get 'Chateau Margaux,'
duty paid, at from 40s. to 50s. a dozen. I was once asked to buy some
wine bearing that label for 2s. 6d. a bottle. The names of one or two
well-known wines having reached your host's ears, he likes to show you by
the name on the label that he is giving them to you; and, unfortunately,
Margaux and Lafitte _labels_ cost no more than any other.

A good deal of sherry and port--even more brandied than for the English
market--is drunk. A wealthy man will never give you colonial wine, not
because it is necessarily worse than the imported stuff on his table, but
because it is colonial. Amongst the middle classes it is beginning to
find favour. A great deal of extravagant praise has been lavished in the
press on these wines since the Bordeaux Exhibition, and I fear that many
who taste them for the first time will be disappointed. They are too
heady, and for the most part wanting in bouquet, whilst their distinctive
character repels the palate, which is accustomed to European growths. But
for all that, I cannot understand how men with only moderate means living
out here can pay large prices for very inferior imported wines, when a
good sound, palatable wine is obtainable at from 15s. to 25s. a dozen. At
the latter price a Sauvignon approaching to claret, grown close to
Melbourne, is obtainable, which is really excellent; and the white
hermitage from the same district, as well as from the Hunter River
district in New South Wales, at 15s. a dozen, is also as good as one can
wish, short of a _grand vin_, although in none of these wines do you
entirely lose the _goût du terroir_, a peculiar earthy taste resulting
from the strength of the soil. The cheapest wholesome wine I have ever
drunk off the Continent is a thin _vin ordinaire_, smelling like
_piquette_, which is sold at a certain rather low-looking shop in
Melbourne. It is quite palatable, and when heavily watered I can vouch
for its wholesomeness.

The lightest of these wines contain about 18 degrees of spirit, whereas,
as you know, an 'ordinaire' has only about 8, and a burgundy not more
than 11 or 12. But the native wines which are generally preferred by the
colonists themselves are the South Australian. In spite of a duty of 10s.
a dozen, large quantities of Adelaide wine are drunk in Melbourne. Its
chief characteristics are sweetness and heaviness. It may seem to you
incredible, but I have drunk a wine made from the Verdeilho grape, and,
grown near Adelaide by a Mr. C. Bonney, which contained no less than 36
degrees of natural spirit, without a drop added: 32 and 33 degrees are
quite common, and the average percentage in South Australian wine is
about 28.

In most cases the wines are named after the grape from which they are
made, though sometimes the less sensible course of calling the wine
'claret,' 'sherry,' or 'port,' is adopted. I say less sensible, because
all colonial wines have a peculiar flavour, which makes it difficult to
mistake them for the wines they profess to imitate. The
Carbinet-Sauvignon grape, which I believe is the principal one used in
the Bordeaux district, produces here a wine something like what you get
on the Rhone. The Riesling, a Rhineland grape, resembles a brandied hock;
it makes one of the best wines, and is often very palatable. The red and
white Hermitage grapes do best of all. The Muscatel makes a delicious
sweet wine in Adelaide, but it is very heady. I have no doubt that in the
course of time, and when more scientific methods are pursued, South
Australia will produce excellent ports and sherries, as well as
Constantias, Malagas, and madeira, but I fear it will not be within the
present generation. Claret, I understand from experts, will never be
produced, but hermitages and wines of that type will be made in the
course of ten or twenty years which will be able to compete in the
European markets; long before this they should become useful for blending
with French and Spanish wines. As a rule the wine is already sound and
wholesome; and if one comes to think of it, taste is a purely arbitrary
matter. One forms one's taste according to a certain standard to which
one is accustomed. To a man accustomed to colonial wines, clarets and
hocks seem thin and sour. One great difficulty which militates against
the reputation of Australian wine, is that of the untrustworthiness of
all but a few brands. Of course all vintages from the same grapes differ,
but there is a margin of difference beyond which a wine may not go, and
with many an Australian _vigneron_ this margin is frequently passed,
owing to carelessness or inexperience in manufacture. Another drawback is
the difficulty of procuring all but the most immature wine. Nearly the
whole of each vintage is drunk within twelve months after it is made.
That Australian wines will ever compete with the famous French _crûs_ I
should very much doubt, but that they will in the course of the next
twenty years gradually supersede with advantage a great deal of the
manufactured stuff now drunk in England is more than probable. At present
the prices are too high for Australian wines to find any large market at
home. Although it is of course an exceptional case, there is an Adelaide
madeira which fetches as much as 63s. per dozen within two miles of the
vineyard. Nothing now obtainable in Australia under 15s. a dozen would be
worth sending home, and by the time freight and duty is added to that,
the London price would be considerable.

I have already made allusion to that peculiar phase of Australian
life--nobblerising; but, if I am not mistaken, the impression left on
your mind will be that the nobbler is either of aristocratic champagne or
plebeian beer. But there are two other liquids--whisky and brandy--which
play an important part in nobblerising. The quantity of spirits drunk in
Australia is appalling. Whisky is the favourite spirit, then brandy, and
rarely Schiedam, schnapps, or gin. And what about drunkenness?
Statistically it is not very much worse than in England, but the
difference lies in the class who get drunk. Here it is not merely the
lower classes, but everybody that drinks. Not a few of the wealthiest and
most leading citizens are well-known to be frequently drunk, though their
names do not, of course, appear in the papers or in the police reports.
The state of public feeling on the subject, though improving, is much as
it was in England twenty or thirty years ago. Society says, 'Capital
fellow, Jones; pity he drinks!' but no social reprobation attaches to
Jones. He may be known to be carried to bed every night, for all it
affects his reputation as a respectable and respected citizen. But with
the advance of civilization better times are coming in these matters. It
is no more so absolute a necessity to take a nobbler as it was ten years
ago. Drunkenness, if not reprobated, is no longer considered a
'gentlemanly vice.' A man who drinks is pitied. This is the first step.
Before long blame will tread in the steps of pity.

But enough of drinking. It is not a pleasant subject. Besides, I have not
yet described the food of any but the working-class. And if they live ten
times better than their fellows at home, it is equally true that the
middle, and especially the upper, class live ten times worse. It requires
the tongue and the pen of a Brillat-Savarin to give flavour to a
Barmecide's feast; but as victualling is as necessary a condition of
existence here as anywhere else, I must do my best to enlighten you as to
our situation in this respect. May you never have practical experience
thereof! If it be true that, while the French eat, the English only feed,
we may fairly add that the Australians 'grub'. Nor could it well be
otherwise under the circumstances. It is not merely because it is
difficult to entice a good cook to come out here. If he really wants a
thing, the wealthy colonist will not spare money to get it; but how can
you expect a man who--for the greater part of his life--has been eating
mutton and damper, and drinking parboiled tea three times a day, to
understand the art of good living? Even if he does, he finds it
unappreciated by those around him; and there are few men fond enough of
the luxuries of life to be singular in their enjoyment. It takes a lot of
trouble to get and keep a good cook, and there is nothing the Australian
abhors like trouble. Consequently--I am now speaking only of the
wealthy--he adopts one of two courses.

Either he gives occasional grand dinners, in which case he imagines he
has got a good cook because he is paying £60 or £70 a year for him--no
very large salary even in England for a _chef_; or he is contented to
live anyhow. In the latter case he dines at his club (where, by the way,
he gets a very fair meal) in the middle of the day, and has meat-tea in
the evening. In both cases the family dinner is much the same. No. 1
cannot see the use of having what he would call a 'spread' for his own
selfish benefit, and leaves his grand cook unemployed the greater part of
the week. The dinner consists of beef or mutton, roast or boiled,
potatoes and greens, bread-and-butter pudding, and cheese. The details
change, but the type is always the same--what his wife calls 'a good
plain English dinner, none of your unwholesome French kickshaws,' which
are reserved for company. Fortunately his cook, if not very expert in the
'foreign' dishes required to be concocted for company, has generally
pretty correct notions within the limits of the family dinner.

But it is not so with No. 2, and with the large middle class who all live
in the same way. The usual female cook at 12s. a week is not even capable
of sending up a plain meal properly. Her meat is tough, and her potatoes
are watery. Her pudding-range extends from rice to sago, and from sago to
rice, and in many middle-class households pudding is reserved for Sundays
and visitors. A favourite summer dish is stewed fruit, and, as it is not
easy to make it badly, there is a great deal to commend in it. At the
worst, it is infinitely preferable to fruit tart with an indigestible
crust.

Ye gentlemen of England, who sit at home at ease, how astonished you
would be to see your daughter Maud, whose husband is a well-to-do lawyer
in considerable practice, setting the table herself because she cannot
rely upon her servant doing it properly! And then she goes into the
kitchen, and teaches cook how to make pie-crust. If children are
numerous, or her husband is not getting on quite so well as could be
wished, she will not be able to have a servant to wait at table. What
wonder, then, if she gives up late dinner and has a meat-tea, at which
everything can be put on the table at once. A colonial-bred lady has
generally learnt something of good plain cooking, but the English
mistress often breaks down before the serious and multifarious nature of
her duties. It is by no means uncommon for her to be suddenly left
servantless for two or three days; and if she does not possess great
adaptability of disposition, the whole house is bound to be at
sixes-and-sevens, and all its occupants, including herself, in anything
but a pleasant state of mind. If a woman is worth her salt, she will not
mind these things, or rather she will make the best of them; but it is
not every English young lady whose love for her husband, present or
future, will carry her through these domestic hurricanes; and, if not,
she had better not come out here, although husbands are plentiful. Except
amongst a very small class who can afford luxuries, the
girl-of-the-period is out of place in Australia.

DRESS.

I doubt whether in my preceding letters I have made the distinction
between Melbourne and its sister capitals sufficiently plain. I shall
perhaps best convey it by saying that Melbourne is quasi-metropolitan,
while both Sydney and Adelaide are alike provincial in their mode of
life. In the matters of which I have been writing, the difference has
hardly been sufficient to warrant a separate treatment; but with regard
to dress, it becomes so noticeable, that not to treat of Melbourne
separately would convey a false idea. For in dress it is not too much to
say that the ladies of Melbourne are luxurious-a charge which could
scarcely be brought against Australians in any other particular that I
can think of. And take them all-in-all, they do not dress badly; indeed,
if one considers the distance from Paris, and the total want of a
competent leader of fashion, they may be said to dress well, especially
of late years. The highly fantastic and gorgeous costumes for which
Melbourne used to be notorious are fast disappearing. Successful diggers
no longer take their wives into a shop, and ask how much colour and stuff
can be put into a dress for fifty pounds. Already outrageousness is
confined to a few, and when I say that it is generally agreed to be 'bad
form,' you will understand that its death-blow has been struck and the
hearse ordered. Bright colours are still in vogue, but they are not
necessarily loud or unpleasant beneath the austral sun, and the act of
combining them is beginning to be understood. When one remembers how
their houses are furnished, and what their general style of living is it
is astonishing to find Melbourne ladies dressing so brilliantly and yet
with so little vulgarity.

But it is not among the _grand monde_--if the term be not ridiculous as
applied to Victoria--that you must go to discover taste. I am not sure
that, class for class, the rich do not show the least taste in their
apparel. Many of them send to Paris for their dresses, and pay sums,
which make one's mouth water, to be dressed in the latest fashion; but I
fancy that the French _modistes_ manufacture a certain style of attire
for the Australian taste, just as the French merchants manufacture
clarets for the Australian market. It is a compound of the _cocotte_
and the American. Nor when she has got a handsome dress does the
Melbourne _grande dame_ know how to wear it; she merely succeeds in
looking what a Brighton lodging-house keeper once defined to me as a
'carriage-lady.' A lady of the English upper middle-class dressed by a
London milliner looks infinitely better.

There are some costumes worn by Victorian ladies which you will never see
worn by any other ladies; but for all that, the middle and even the lower
class am by no means destitute of ideas about dress. Compare the
Melbourne with the Birmingham or Manchester factory girl, or the young
lady in a Collins Street retail establishment with the shop-girl in any
but the most aristocratic part of London; the old country will come out
second-best. And why is it? It is no easy question to answer; at the
bottom is undoubtedly that general love of display, which is almost as
characteristic of Melbourne as it is of Paris. But then what is the cause
of that? And a love of display, though it may be and is amongst the
wealthy productive of grand dresses, as it is of grand dinners and grand
furniture, does not make taste--e.g., the Second Empire; and though it
would be going too far to say that the ladies of Melbourne dress
tastefully, it is within the truth to give them credit for a tendency
towards taste. Throughout England the middle and lower classes dress
hideously. Why should the first generation of Victorians show a
disposition to abandon the ugly? I leave it to some aesthetic philosopher
to find out the reason, and content myself with noting the fact. If I
wanted to moralize, I have little doubt that the drapers' and milliners'
accounts of these 'young ladies' would furnish a redundant text, and
that, although a large number of them make up their dresses themselves
from paper patterns or illustrations in _Myra's Journal_. How they can
afford to dress as well as they do, they and their mothers best know; but
the bow here and the flower there are not costly things, and the mere
fact of being able to cut out a dress so as not to look dowdy shows
natural taste. It is the rarest of sights to see a real Melbourne girl
look dowdy. Her taste sometimes runs riot: it is exuberant, and becomes
vulgar and flash; but even then the vulgarity and flashness are of a
superior type to those of her equals across the ocean.

Sydney and Adelaide are distinctly superior to English towns of the same
size in the matter of apparel; but they will not bear comparison with
Melbourne. On the other hand, gorgeous and flash dresses are very rare in
the smaller cities. If they have not the talent of Melbourne, neither do
they share its blots. They go along at a steady jog-trot, and are content
to take their fashions second-hand from Melbourne, but with
modifications. Their more correct and sober taste will not tolerate even
many of the extravagances of which London is guilty--such extravagances,
for instance, as the Tam O'Shanter cap, which was warmly taken up in
Melbourne. But with all this good sense, they remain dowdy.

I have said nothing hitherto of married ladies' dress. When a colonial
girl marries, she considers herself, except in rare instances, on the
shelf, and troubles herself very little about what she wears. As a rule,
she has probably too many other things to take up her time. She has got a
husband, and what more can she want? He rarely cares what she has on, as
soon as the honeymoon is over. There is no one else to please, and I fear
that colonial girls are not of those who dress merely for themselves;
they like to be admired, and they appreciate the value of dress from a
flirtation point of view. Their taste is rather the outcome of a desire
to please others than of a sense of aesthetics. It is relative, and not
absolute. When once the finery has served its purpose, they are ready to
renounce all the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. And if the
moralist says that this argues some laxness of ideas before marriage, let
him remember that it is equally indicative of connubial bliss. Once
married, her flirtations are at an end--'played out,' if I may use the
term.

In another respect the Victorian is the direct opposite of the
_Parisienne_. If you leave general effects, and come to pull her dress
to pieces, you find that the metal is only electro, to whatever rank of
life she may belong. The general appearance may be pleasing, but in
detail she is execrable. Not but that the materials of her dress are rich
enough, so that my electro simile will hardly hold water; but money does
not make the artist. Let us begin with the bonnet. Walk down Collins
Street at the time of the block on Saturday, and I doubt whether you can
count half a dozen bonnets which are both pretty and suitable to the face
and head of the wearer. _Bien chaussée et bien gantée_ might be Greek
as far as Australia is concerned, and if by chance you see a stocking or
any portion of the under-clothing, you will have your eyes opened.
Whatever does not meet the eye is generally of the commonest. It would be
thought a sinful waste of money to have anything particularly good or
expensive which other people could not see. The light of Melbourne is
never likely to hide itself under a bushel; external adornment is the
_mot d'ordre_. Ribbons and laces, or anything that helps to improve the
look of a dress, the colonial lady will indulge in freely and even
extravagantly; but you must not penetrate her tinsel armour.

Owing to the climate, hats are much more frequently in use than bonnets,
and if the merit of subdued tints is unappreciated, it is not often that
the eye is shocked by the glaring discords to which Englishwomen are so
prone. Fringes are much worn, and the hair is often parted on the side.
In spite of the heat, _gants de suède_ find very little favour; they
look dirty, and with a 25 per cent. duty cannot be renewed every day. The
usual English fashions find their way to Melbourne in about eight months,
and this is the more convenient, because your summer is our winter, and
_vice versa_. Spring and autumn we agree to forget; this is rather a
pity, because practically nine-twelfths of our year are spring and
autumn, and on a bright July or August day the dress which is appropriate
to a London fog in December looks singularly out of place. Sealskins and
furs are worn till you almost imagine it must be cold, which during
daylight it hardly ever is in this country. In summer, suitable
concessions become obligatory, and dresses are made of the thinnest and
lightest materials. Pompadour prints and white calicoes reign supreme,
and look better than anything else. It is then that the poorer classes
are able to dress best, the material being cheap. Winter stuffs are
expensive, and to a great degree their effectiveness is in direct ratio
to their cost; but during quite half of the Australian year the poor meet
the rich, if not on an equality, at any rate on much fairer terms than at
home with regard to dress.

Servants, of course, ape their mistresses' dresses as in England, and
generally manage to produce a delightful sense of incongruity in their
attire; but for all that, they are much less dowdy than English servants.

So much for ladies' dress. Change the sexes, and the picture is by no
means so pleasing; for thorough untidiness of person, there can surely be
no one to beat the Australian. Above all must one beware of judging a
man's position by his coat. It is impossible to tell whether the dirty
old man who slouches along the street is a millionaire or a beggar. The
older his coat, and the dirtier his shirt, the more the probabilities are
in favour of the millionaire. Perhaps he thinks he can afford to dress as
he pleases. The city men are more careful of their personal appearance,
and have kept up the shadow and image of London. They wear shiny
frock-coats and the worst-brushed and most odd-shaped of top-hats, and
imagine they are well-dressed; at least I suppose they do, for they seem
to have a sort of contempt for the spruce tweed suits and round hats of
'new chums,' and such of the rising generation as have followed their
example and adopted that fashion. Can you imagine yourself wearing a
black coat and high hat with the thermometer jogging about from 70º to
110º in the shade? If the coat were decently cut, and of good cloth and
well-brushed, and the silk hat well-shapen and neat, I might put you down
a fool, but would admit your claims to be a dandy. But as it is, most of
our city men are both uncomfortable and untidy. Their clothes look as if
they had been bought ready-made at a slop-shop. The tie they prefer is a
black bootlace; if not, it is bound to be of the most tasteless colour
and pattern you can think of. A heavy gold watch-chain and diamond ring
is _de rigueur_, but otherwise they do not wear much jewellery. Their
hair, like their clothes, generally wants brushing, and hands and nails
are not always so clean as they might be; but one knows that for the most
part they tub every morning: this is a consolation.

The bushman, at least, dresses sensibly. Wen he comes into town, he puts
on a slop-coat, but retains, if not a cabbage-tree, at any rate a
wide-brimmed, soft felt hat. Sacrificing comfort to ceremony, he
generally puts on a collar, but he often kicks at a tie: he finds he must
draw a line somewhere. But there is something so redolent of the bush
about him, that one would not have him otherwise; the slop clothes even
become picturesque from the cavalier fashion in which he wears them. Note
that his pipe never leaves his mouth, while the city man does not venture
to smoke in any of the main streets. He is a regular Jack ashore, this
bushman. A bull would not be more out of place in a china-shop, though
probably less amusing and more destructive. The poor fellow meets so many
friends in town, that by the end of the day he has probably had more
nobblers than are altogether good for him. It is a very hard life that he
leads, and he takes his pleasure, like his work, hardly.

If the Adelaidians are perhaps the least got-up, they are certainly the
most suitably dressed of the inhabitants of Australian towns. With them
the top hat is comparatively of recent introduction. Silk coats and
helmets are numerous still, though becoming more rare every day.
Melbourne and Sydney think it _infra dig._ to allow themselves these
little comforts, and Adelaide is gradually becoming corrupted. It must,
however, be added that the Adelaide folk are the most untidy, as the
Melbourne are the least untidy of Australians. Comfort and elegance do
not always go hand in hand. Tweeds are beginning to come into use amongst
the upper middle, as they long have in the lower middle and lower
classes. Capital stuffs are made at Sydney, Melbourne, Ballarat, and
Geelong; but the patterns are very common. In a dusty place like this it
is impossible to keep black clothes clean, and tweeds give far the best
wear and appearance of any stuff. For my own part, I wear them winter and
summer.

The working-classes can, of course, afford to be, and are, better dressed
than at home; for though clothes are in reality much dearer, they are
much cheaper in proportion to wages. They do not often wear black coats
in the week, but keep them for Sundays and grand occasions. Directly an
immigrant has landed, he feels that his first earnings must be devoted to
a Sunday go-to-meeting suit. His fellow-men all have one, and he does not
like to feel himself their inferior, even with regard to a coat.

YOUNG AUSTRALIA.

Hitherto I have been writing of the properties and adjuncts of Australian
life. It is high time to say something of the colonists themselves. And,
here I shall describe the types which the colony has produced and is
producing, rather than such modifications as colonists born and bred in
England have undergone during their subsequent residence in
Australia--colonials as distinct from colonists.

Perhaps of their first stage of existence the less said the better. I
have a holy horror of babies, to whatever nationality they may belong;
but for general objectionableness I believe there are none to compare
with the Australian baby. It is not only that the summer heat and sudden
changes of climate make him worse-behaved than his _confrères_ over
the ocean, but the little brute is omnipresent, and I might almost add
omnipotent. Nurses are more expensive and mothers less fastidious than in
England. Consequently, baby lives in the family circle almost from the
time of its birth. Nurseries are few and far between. He is lashed into a
chair by his mother's side at meals; he accompanies her when she is
attending to her household duties, and often even when she is receiving
her visitors. But if this were all I would say nothing. French children
are brought up in a similar way; and in their case it certainly has its
advantages as far as the child is concerned, whatever may be the
inconvenience to the adults amongst whom it is brought. It is easy to
avoid families whose children make themselves nuisances to visitors. But
the middle and lower classes of Australians are not content with the
baby's supremacy in the household. Wherever his mother goes, baby is also
taken. He fills railway carriages and omnibuses, obstructs the pavement
in perambulators, and is suckled _coram populo_ in the Exhibition.
There is no getting away from him, unless you shut yourself up
altogether. He squalls at concerts; you have to hold him while his mother
gets out of the omnibus, and to kiss him if you are visiting her house.

It is little better when he gets old enough to walk and talk. Having once
made the household bow down before him, he is slow to relinquish the
reins of office. Possession is nine points of the law. It requires a
stern parent to make good the tenth. If the child no longer cries or has
to be kissed, he makes up for it in other ways. He has breathed the free
air of Australian independence too early to have much regard for the
fifth commandment. To make himself a nuisance till he gets what he wants
is the art he first learns and to this end he considers all means
legitimate. Strict and _a fortiori_ severe measures towards children
are at a discount in Australia, and, considering the surrounding
circumstances, by no other means can they be rendered tractable. The
child has no restrictions put on his superabundant animal spirits, and he
runs wild in the most extraordinary, and often to elders, unpleasant
freaks. Certes the second stage is but little less unpleasant than the
first,

When it gets into petticoats or breeches, the child must be treated of
according to sex. And here _place aux demoiselles_, for from this time
upwards they are a decided improvement upon their brothers. The
Australian schoolgirl, with all her free-and-easy manner, and what the
Misses Prunes and Prisms would call want of maidenly reserve, could teach
your bread-and-butter miss a good many things which would be to her
advantage. It is true that neither schoolmistresses nor governesses could
often pass a Cambridge examination, nor have they any very great desire
for intellectual improvement. But the colonial girl is sharper at picking
up what her mistress does know than the English one, and she has more of
the boy's emulation. Whatever her station in life, she is bound to strum
the piano; but in no country is a good pianoforte player more rare, or do
you hear greater trash strummed in a drawing-room. Languages and the
other accomplishments are either neglected or slurred over; but, on the
other hand, nearly every colonial girl learns something of household
work, and can cook some sort of a dinner, yea, and often cut out and make
herself a dress. She is handy with her fingers, frank, but by no means
necessarily fast in manner, good-natured and fond of every species of
fun. If her accomplishments are not many, she sets little value on those
she possesses, and never feels the want of, or wastes a regret, on any
others.

Almost all girls go to school, but the home-training leads to little
obedience or respect for their teachers, and the parental authority is
constantly interposed to prevent well-deserved punishments. Accustomed to
form judgments early and fearlessly, each girl measures her mistress by
her own standard; and if she comes up to that standard, an _entente
cordiale_ is established, the basis whereof is the equality which each
feels to subsist independent of their temporary relations.

At seventeen my lady comes out, though for the last two, if not three or
four, years she has been attending grown-up dances at the houses of
friends, so that the edge of her pleasure has long been dulled. School
once left behind, she looks upon marriage as the end and object of life;
but it must not be supposed from this that she makes any attempt to catch
a husband. Young men are plentiful enough, and she does not care when her
turn comes. That it is bound to come she takes for granted, and
accordingly is always on the look-out for it. The camaraderie which
exists between her and some half-a-dozen men may lead to something with
one of them; and meanwhile she has time to ascertain their dispositions
and turn their qualities over and over in her mind till some one's
attentions become marked, and she makes up her mind that she is suited or
the reverse. She has danced too much before she came out to care much for
it now; but in a warm climate, where verandas and gardens lend themselves
so readily to flirtation, she retains a due appreciation of balls and
parties, and gets a far larger number of them than an English girl of the
middle class.

On the average, colonial girls possess more than their share of good
looks; but 'beauties' are rare, and the sun plays the deuce with
complexions. The commonest type is the jolly girl who, though she has
large hands and feet, no features and no figure, yet has a taking little
face, which makes you say: 'By Jove, she is not half bad-looking!'
Brunettes are, of course, in the majority; and every third or fourth girl
has beautiful brown eyes and an abundance of coarsish hair--which, by the
way, she probably dresses in an untidy knob, all corners and no
rotundity.

Her manners have lost the boisterousness of school days, but still often
want toning down according to English ideas. Her frankness and
good-fellowship are captivating, and you feel that all her faults spring
from the head, and not from the heart. She is rarely affected, and is
singularly free from 'notions,' though by no means wanting in ideas and
in conversation of a not particularly cultured description. With a keen
idea of the value of money and the benefits to be derived from its
possession, she never takes it into consideration in choosing her
husband: her ideal of whom is above all things 'manly'--the type that
used to be known under the description of 'muscular Christians.'

In religion her views are not pronounced. She attends church pretty
regularly, but is entirely free from superstition, though not always from
intolerance. Adoration of the priesthood is not at all in her line. For
politics she cares nothing, except in Victoria where naturally she
espouses her father's side warmly, but in an irrational, almost stupid,
way. Art is a dead letter to her, and so is literature, unless an
unceasing and untiring devotion to three-volume novels be counted under
that head. To music, according to her lights, she professes, and often
feels, a strong leaning.

There is one thing about her that strikes you disagreeably in society. It
is her want of conversation with ladies and married people. To a
bachelor, to whom she has just been introduced, she will chatter away
nineteen to the dozen; but, even in her own, house, she has no idea of
the social duties. Marriage, in her opinion, is a Rubicon, which, once
crossed, if it does not altogether debar from the pleasures of maiden and
bachelorhood, at least makes it necessary for married folk to shift for
themselves. To talk or dance with a married man would be a terrible waste
of time; and as for married women, she expects to join that holy army of
martyrs in the course of time, and will then be quite contented with the
same treatment as she has meted out to others. The politeness which
springs from a sense of duty to others is little known to the Australian
girl. If she likes you, she will make herself very pleasant; but if you
are not worth wasting powder and shot on, you must expect to realize that
disagreeable truth in all its nakedness.

In many things a child, she often looks forward to her wedding for the
mere festivity of the occasion, and thinks how jolly it will be to have
six bridesmaids, how nice she will look in her bridal dress, and how the
other fellows will envy her chosen one. Generally marrying two or three
years younger than the English girl, she would consider herself an 'old
maid' at twenty-three; and for old maids she entertains the very minimum
of respect, in spite of their rarity in the colonies. Once married, she
gives up to a large extent, if not entirely, the pomps and vanities of
which she has had her full during spinsterhood, and devotes herself to
her household, children, and husband. She usually has a large family, and
in them pays for all the sins of her youth. She has had her fling, and
for the rest of her life she lives but to serve her children and make
them happy, recognising that in the antipodes 'juniores priores' is the
adopted motto.

The Australian schoolboy is indeed a 'caution.' With all the worst
qualities of the English boy, he has but few of his redeeming points. His
impudence verges on impertinence, and his total want of respect for
everybody and everything passes all European understanding. His father
and mother he considers good sort of folk, whom he will not go out of his
way to displease; his schoolmaster often becomes, _ipso facto_, his
worst enemy, in the never-ceasing, war with whom all is fair, and
obedience but the last resource. Able to ride almost as soon as he can
walk, he is fond of all athletic sports; but it is not till leaving
school that his athleticism becomes fully pronounced: thus reversing the
order observed in England, where the great majority of the boys, who are
cricket and football mad at school, more or less drop those pursuits as
young men. He is too well fed and supplied with pocket-money ever to feel
the need for theft, but it is difficult to get him to understand Dr.
Arnold's views about lying and honour. Though not wanting in pluck, he
lacks the wholesome experience of a few good lickings, and can easily
pass his school-days without having a single fight. He is quarrelsome
enough, but his quarrels rarely go farther than hard words and spiteful
remarks. At learning he is apt, having the spirit of rivalry pretty
strong in him.

In all but one or two schools classes are too much mixed to make a
gentlemanly tone possible, and such little refinements as tidiness of
dress are out of the question. When he is at home for the holidays, his
mother tries to dig some manners into him (if she has any herself); but
he has far too great a sense of the superiority of the rising generation
to pay more attention to her than is exacted by the fear of punishment.
Unfortunately, that punishment is very sparingly made use of; and when it
is used, it takes a very lenient shape, public opinion being strongly
against corporal punishment, however mild, and according to children a
number of liberties undreamed of in the old country.

Indoors the Australian boy is more objectionable than the English one,
because he is under less restraint, and knows no precincts forbidden to
him. Generally intelligent and observant, he is here, there, and
everywhere; nothing escapes him, nothing is sacred to him. Of course his
further development draws its form and shape from his previous
caterpillar condition, and when he comes to take his place in mercantile
or professional life, he is equally disagreeable and irrepressible.

But such a young 'gum-sucker' must not be confounded with the ordinary
middle-class Englishmen who form the majority of the professional and
business men one comes in contact with in the present day. The native
Australian element is still altogether in the minority in everyday life,
and the majority of adults are English-born colonists. What modification
then, you will ask, does the middle-class Englishman undergo in
Australia? In some ways, a deterioration; in others, an amelioration. The
deteriorating tendency shows itself in an increased love of dram--and
especially spirit--drinking; in apparel and general carelessness; in a
roughening of manner and an increase of selfishness. The improvement lies
chiefly in greater independence of manner and thought, in a greater
amount of thought, in enlarged and more tolerant views, in less reserve
and _morgue_, in additional kindness of heart, and in a more complete
realization of the great fact of human brotherhood.

In Australia a man feels himself an unit in the community, a somebody; in
England he is one amongst twenty-seven millions, a nobody. This feeling
brings with it a greater sense of self-respect and responsibility.
Altogether, then, it may be said that the balance of the modification is
generally on the side of improvement rather than of deterioration. The
Englishman in Australia improves more than he deteriorates. And this is
the more true the lower you descend in the social scale. It may be
doubted whether the really well-educated man--the 'gentleman' in short,
to use the word in its technical sense of a man well born, well bred, and
well educated--generally improves in the colonies. As a rule, I should
say he deteriorates. He cannot often find a sufficiently large number of
his equals within a sufficiently small area, nor keep sufficiently
amongst them not to lose somewhat in manner and culture. He develops the
breadth, as distinct from the depth, of his intellect. He learns a great
deal which he did not know before from the life around him, but he also
forgets a great deal which he has learnt.

The great tendency of Australian life is democratic, i.e. levelling. The
lower middle-class and the upper middle-class are much less distinct than
at home, and come more freely and frequently, indeed continually, into
contact with each other. This is excellent for the former, but not so
good for the latter. In the generation that is growing up, the levelling
process is going much further. The small tradesmen's sons are going into
professions, and the professional men's sons into trades. You have the
same tendency in England, but not nearly to the same extent.

Slight as is the division between the middle-class and the wealthy class,
I ought perhaps to say a few words on the latter. Practically, as well as
theoretically, there is no aristocracy in Australia, and the number of
leisured men is yet too small for them to form a class by themselves.
Still every day their number is increasing; and although they almost all
do a certain amount of work, it is rather because, if they did not, they
would find time lie heavy on their hands, than because there is any
particular need for it. The wealthy squatter--which low-sounding word has
in Australia become synonymous with aristocrat--spends the greater part
of the year in supervising his station, although generally employing a
manager, whose work bears much the same relation to his own, as that of
the permanent head of a department does to that of his political chief.
Whenever there is a race meeting or any other attraction, the squatter
comes down ( _not_ up as in England) to town and spends a few days or a
few weeks there, as the case may be. If he is a married man he probably
keeps a town house, where his wife lives the greater part of the winter,
which is the 'season;' if a bachelor, he lives at his club, which
supplies him with lodging as well as board.

But he finds it hard work to spend any lengthened period in town. The
clubs are deserted for the greater part of the day; everyone else has his
or her work to do, and a lounger becomes equally a nuisance to himself
and to his friends. With no tastes for literature or art, and little
opportunity for their gratification if he should chance to possess them,
he is thrown utterly on his own resources, and these rarely extend beyond
drinking and gambling. Both these pursuits are more fitted for gaslight
than daylight, and if indulged in too freely during the day, pall in the
evening, so that he has literally nothing to do from breakfast till
dinner. He cannot race or play cricket quotidianally, so that he soon
returns to his station, where he stops till the next race meeting.

The wealth of Australia has not yet passed beyond the first generation.
The majority of the wealthy have themselves made their fortunes, and are
not inclined to let them be squandered by their sons, at least during,
their lifetime. The number of young men with no regular employment is at
present very small. And it is well it should be so. Else we should feel
all the evils of a plutocracy, purified neither by education nor public
opinion--evils which have already made themselves apparent in the
political system of Victoria.

The Australian aristocrat has the greatest contempt for politics, and
thereby has forged a collar for his own neck. The 'Berry blight,' as it
is called, which has fallen over Victoria, is, to a great extent, a
reaction against the selfish and inconsiderate policy of the squatters
when they were in power. In such a crisis the mob has no time to be just,
remembering only that the aristocracy were never generous. Politically, I
fancy that the squatters will never again obtain power, except under
conditions which will make a return to the old _régime_ impossible.
Socially, there are yet evil days before Australia.

There is a great deal of truth in the old saying--that it takes three
generations to make a gentleman and there is no doubt but that the second
is infinitely the worst of the three. Shortly the country will pass
through a period when an unearned increment will fall into the hands of a
half-educated class, whose life has nurtured in them strong animal
passions; but I see no reason why we should not pass through the social
as we are passing through the political crisis, and obtain a modified
aristocracy in the third generation, which in the fourth should become as
profitable to the country as an aristocracy well can be.

At present the old squatter drinks and gambles; his son will drink less,
gamble more--though it was not a young man who recently lost £40,000 in a
night's sitting at a club in Melbourne--and lead a wanton life; but he
will probably have the sense to educate his children thoroughly, instead
of taking them away from school at seventeen, as was done with himself;
and the grandson will obtain some cultivated tastes which will make a
fight for it with those he has inherited. In the fourth generation there
should be an aristocracy, with as much similarity of character and
disposition to the existing English aristocracy as the different
circumstances of the two countries will permit.

The life of a wealthy woman in Australia is _ennuyeux_ to a degree. If
she is a lady by birth and education, she must necessarily feel that the
advantages which wealth bestows are squandered upon such provincialism as
she is perforce subjected to. To reign in hell is, after all, a very low
ideal, and one which can only be entertained by an inferior nature, so
long as heaven remains within reach. There are, of course, advantages in
being rich even in Australia; but the wealthy lady will naturally draw
comparisons between these and those which the same amount of money would
procure for her in London or Paris. She can import dresses from Worth's,
and carriages from Peters', but she cannot choose them for herself; and
if they should be really admirable, who is there to appreciate their
superiority to the surrounding fashions?

'How on earth am I to get on in Adelaide,' said a musician of
considerable merit to me, 'when, as you know, there is no one with whom I
can provoke comparisons?' The very superiority of the man was fatal to
his success. And so it is with the Australian lady of taste. Nor does the
misfortune stop there. Unless she makes frequent visits to centres of
taste, I will defy any woman to retain her appreciation of good taste.
Her own taste gets dulled by the want of means of comparison. You will
perhaps say that taste in her surroundings is not everything which wealth
can bring to a woman. But if you come to reflect for a moment, you will
see that in the more comprehensive meaning of the phrase it is. Dress is
but one example of the surroundings which a woman covets. I have chosen
it because it is perhaps the commonest, though of course not by a long
way the highest,

But wealthy ladies 'to the manner born' are not so numerous in Australia
that I need dwell long on the drawbacks of their position. It is at any
rate happier than that of the _parvenue_, unless the mere fact of being
 _arrivée_ confers any special enjoyment. At what has she arrived? At
carriages, at dresses, at houses and furniture, and at servants of a
style she is totally unaccustomed to and unfitted for. When you tremble
before your butler, and have to learn how to behave at table from your
housekeeper, wealth cannot be unalloyed pleasure. Without education and
taste, the _parvenue_ has small means of enjoying herself except by
making a display which costs her even more anxiety and trouble than it
does money. Wiser is the rich woman who contents herself with the same
style of life as she was accustomed to in her youth, adding to it only
the things that she really wants--a more roomy house, a couple of
women-servants, and a buggy. Thus she can feel really comfortable and at
home; but unfortunately for their own and their husbands 'peace of mind'
these poor women are too often ambitious to become what they are not.
Even leaving aside the discomforts which are always allied to
pretentiousness, the poor rich woman has a hard time of it. What can she
do with herself all day long? She has not gone through that long
education up to doing nothing which enables English ladies of means to
pass their time without positive boredom. She has no tastes except those
which she does not dare to gratify, and becomes a slave to the very
wealth whose badge she loves to flaunt.

The Australian working-man is perhaps too well paid to suit us poor folks
who are dependent upon him; but, for all that, comfortable means bring an
improvement in the man as well as in his condition. It is very trying to
have--as I recently had--to go to four plumbers before I could get one to
do a small job for me, and still more trying to find the fourth man fail
me after he had promised to come. Such accidents are of everyday
occurrence in colonial life, and they make one doubt the advantages of a
wealthy working-class. But, independent and difficult to please as the
colonial working-man is, his carelessness is only a natural consequence
of the value set on his labour. Provided he does not drink, you can get
as good a day's work out of him as at home. He will pick his time as to
when he will do your job, and hesitate whether he will do it at all;
but having once started on it, he generally does his best for you.
Too often the sudden increase of wages is too much for his mental
equilibrium, and a man who was sober enough as a poor man at home,
finds no better use for his loose cash than to put it into the
public-house till. But as a class I do not think Australian working men
are less sober than those at home. Those who are industrious and careful
in a very few years rise to be masters and employers of labour, and are
at all times so sure of constant employment that it is no wonder they do
not care about undertaking odd jobs. If their manner is as independent as
their character, I am far from blaming them for it, though occasionally
one could wish they did not confound civility and servility as being
equally degrading to the free and independent elector. But when you meet
the man on equal terms in an omnibus or on other neutral ground, this
cause of complaint is removed. Where he is sure of his equality he makes
no attempt to assert it, and the treatment he receives from many
_parvenu_ employers is no doubt largely the cause of intrusive assertion
of equality towards employers in general. Politically he is led by the
nose, but this is hardly astonishing, since, in nine cases out of ten,
his electoral qualifications are a novelty to him. He carries his
politics in his pocket, or what the penny papers tell him are his
pockets; or, if he rises above selfish considerations he is taken in by
the bunkum of his self-styled friends. But in what country are the free
and independent electors wiser? Happily for Australia, his Radicalism
rarely lasts long, if he is worth his salt. He becomes in a few years one
of the propertied class, has leisure to learn something of the conditions
under which property is best preserved and added to, and thus--according
to the admission of the leading Radical paper--Conservatism is constantly
encroaching on the ranks of Liberalism. Except under very rare
circumstances poverty in Australia may fairly be considered a reproach.
Every man has it in his power to earn a comfortable living; and if after
he has been some time in the colonies the working-man does not become one
of the capitalists his organs inveigh against, he has only himself to
blame.

Of the three sections into which the working-class may be divided--old
chums, new chums, and colonials--the first-named are, on the whole, the
best. For the most part they began life with a superabundance of animal
spirits, and a love of adventure, which have been toned down by a
practical experience of the hardships they dreamed of. They certainly
drink most and swear most of the three sections, but with all their
failings there are few men who can do a harder day's work than they.
Barring pure misfortune, there is always some good reason for their still
remaining in the class they sprang from. Though this is not always
strictly true, since a good many of them began life higher up in the
world than they are now. Still I prefer them to the pepper-and-salt
mixture which has been sent out under that happy-go-lucky process--free
immigration. When the colonies were so badly in want of population, they
could not stop to pick and choose. Hence a large influx of loafers, men
who, without any positive vice, will do anything rather than a hard day's
work, and who come out under the impression that gold is to be picked up
in the streets of Melbourne. Under the name of 'the unemployed' they are
a constant source of worry to the Government, whom they consider bound to
give them something light and easy, with 7s. 6d. or 8s. a day, and give
rise abroad to the utterly false impression that there am times when it
is hard for an industrious man to get work in Australia. Of course many
of our immigrants have become first-rate workmen, but such men soon rise
in the social scale.

The best workman when he chooses, and the most difficult to get hold of,
is the thoroughbred colonial. Being able to read and write does not,
however, keep him from being as brutal as Coupeau, and, except from a
muscular point of view, he is often by no means a promising specimen of
colonization. It is from this section of the community that the
'larrikins,' as they are called, are recruited, roughs of the worst
description, insulting and often robbing people in Melbourne itself, and
moving about in gangs with whose united force the police is powerless to
cope. Sometimes they break into hotels and have 'free drinks' all round,
maltreating the landlord if he protests. In a younger stage they content
themselves with frightening helpless women, and kicking every Chinaman
they meet. On all sides it is acknowledged that the larrikin element is
daily increasing, and has already reached, especially in Melbourne,
proportions which make it threaten to amount to a social clanger within a
few years. Of late their outbreaks have not been confined to night-work,
but take place in open daylight, _coram populo et_ police. No one
exactly knows how to meet the difficulty, and What shall we do with our
larrikins?' is likely to replace the former popular cry of 'What shall
we do with our boys?' to which some ingenious person furnished the
obvious answer, 'Marry them to our girls.' Corporal punishment for
corporal offences is in my opinion and that of most of the serious
portion of the community, the only remedy which is likely also to act as
a preventive; but however desirable it may be acknowledged to be, there
is a difficulty in bringing it into use in communities whose sympathies
are so essentially democratic as those of Victoria and New South
Wales--for in Adelaide the police has still the upper hand. The votes of
these very larrikins turn the scale at elections. Their kith and kin form
a majority of the population, and therefore of the electorate. However
much a member of Parliament or a Minister may recognise the necessity of
meeting a social danger, he can hardly afford to do it at the expense of
his seat.

At the time of the Kelly trial practical demonstration of the latent
sympathy with crime in Melbourne was afforded. Thousands of persons,
headed by the Chairman of Committees of the House of Assembly, actually
agitated for the reprieve of the most notorious, if not the greatest,
criminal in the annals of Australia, a man whose murders were not to be
counted on the fingers; and all this because for over two years he had
set the police at defiance, and after a life of murder and rapine had,
shown the courage of despair when his only choice was between being shot
by a policeman or hung on the gallows. In many respects, as, I have
elsewhere intimated, our free political system makes the social outlook
here far more promising than in Europe; but larrikinism is a peculiar
danger already well above the horizon, against which we seem powerless to
deal. Some set it down to the absence of religious teaching in the State
schools, but its real point and origin seems rather to lie in the absence
of parental authority at home and the unpopularity of the old proverb:
'Spare the rod and spoil the child.'

SOCIAL RELATIONS.

My last letter was necessarily, from the nature of its subject, a little
flaky--a charge to which all these notes must more or less plead guilty.
Though the heading of this one differs slightly, it must practically be a
continuation of the same subject.

The first social relation, like charity, begins in the family circle, and
was incidentally touched upon in my last. Between husband and wife the
relations in Australia are, on the whole, probably as satisfactory as in
any other part of the world. Both generally marry from love, and whatever
may be the general effect of love-matches, it cannot be denied that more
than any others they tend to promote pleasant relations between the 'two
contracting parties,' as the French would call them. Amongst the wealthy,
as everywhere else, there cannot of course be the close marital intimacy
of the middle classes; but not only is infidelity less common than in
London, but moreover, the proportion of the wealthy who keep up the style
which produces the quasi-separation of domestic life is far smaller.
Husband and wife have grown rich together; they have taken counsel
together, and lived an open life, as far as each other are concerned,
ever since they were married. Against this the usages of society,
dressing-rooms and lady's-maids are of little avail. You may chase the
second nature out by the door, but it jumps in again at the window.

In the middle and lower class the comparatively cribbed, cabined, and
confined existence is also of the greatest service to that community of
thought and action upon which conjugal happiness to so large an extent
depends. Domestic occupations also occupy the thoughts of the wives, and
business those of the husbands, so continually, as to leave few moments
of mental vacuity for Satan to introduce mischief into. Of an evening the
clubs are almost deserted, and their few occupants are nearly all
bachelors, or married men who have left their wives in the country,
having come down to town themselves on business. Drink must be recognised
as a factor on the opposite side, and a by no means unimportant one; but
there are many women who have no objection to their husbands drinking, so
long as they either drink at home or come straight thither from the
public-house.

I wish I could give as favourable a view of the parental relations. They
are undeniably the weak point of family life in the colonies. During
childhood a certain obedience is of course enforced; but public feeling
is strong in favour of the naughty boy and wilful girl, looking as it
does upon these qualities as prophetic of future enterprise. So many of
our best colonists, it must be remembered, were eminently wild in their
younger days, that it is no wonder they think 'there is something' in the
self-willed child. Their own life has been too much of a struggle for
them to be able to appreciate at their true value the gentler qualities
which in themselves would have been of little worth, the victory in their
earlier days having been to the physical rather than to the intellectual.
The child is naturally--for surely disobedience is an 'original sin' with
nine children out of ten--only too disposed to take advantage of the
views held by its parents, and gradually as it grows older, disobedience
passes into disrespect and want of respect into want of affection. Such a
thing as perfect confidence, in the French sense of the word, between a
parent and his or her grown-up child is most rare. 'Everyone for himself,
and devil take the hindmost, is the motto of the young Australian. He
cares for nobody, and nobody need care for him, so far as his thoughts on
the subject are concerned. Maternal affection cannot, however, be easily
quenched, and consequently the child gets all the best of the bargain.

Social relations are wider, therefore less easy to speak about decidedly,
than family relations. In the early days there were but few social
distinctions. Everyone was hail-fellow-well-met with everyone else, and
the common struggle merged all differences of birth, wealth, and
education. In a charming little work called 'Some Social Aspects of South
Australian Life,' which was published in Adelaide about two years ago', a
most realistic description is given of the sympathetic mode of living of
the first settlers; and as it has never been reprinted in England, I
extract a few sentences here and there, which may give some idea of the
primitive existence there described:

'The necessaries of life were produced in abundance, the comforts were
slowly reached, and the luxuries had to be done without. There was very
little difference in the actual circumstances of different classes--some
had property and some had none' (this was before the gold-fever); 'but
property was unsaleable for money, and barter only exchanged one
unsaleable article for another' (and yet these are the people who
nowadays groan about _money_ going out of the colony, and would measure
its prosperity by the excess of exports over imports).* [* The
parentheses are my own.] 'Nobody employed hired labour who could possibly
do the work himself, and everyone had to turn his or her hand to a great
deal of miscellaneous work, most of which would be called menial and
degrading in an old community. . . Thus gradually the financial position
of the colony improved by means of the well-directed industry of the
settlers, and they owed much to the helpfulness and good management of
the wives, sisters, and daughters of each household. . . Perhaps, never
in any human society did circumstances realize the ideas of the community
of labour and the equality of the sexes, so fully as in South Australia
in its early days.' Youth and love, hope and trust, were the only stock
in marriage of young couples, so that a new-comer is said to have
remarked, 'Why, it is nothing to get married here! A few mats, and
cane-bottomed chairs, and the house is furnished.'  A wife was not looked
on as a hindrance or an expense, but as a help and a comfort,' says Miss
Spence. 'Girls did not look for establishments; parents did not press for
settlements . . . There was only one carriage in the colony for many
years, which though belonging to a private person, was hired for such as
wanted to do the thing genteelly . . . .' Social position depended on
character, and not on income.

The same writer lays herself fairly open to the charge of being
_laudator temporis acti_ in her description of the present as compared
with the past social life of the colonies, though I am quite prepared to
agree with her remark, that 'in proportion as the conditions of life
become more complex, they should be met by more ingenuity, more culture,
and a deeper sense of duty;' and that 'the suddenness of our accumulation
of wealth has scarcely prepared our little community for some necessary
modifications of our social arrangements.' Therein lies the whole source
of both what is best and what is worst in the present social life of
Australia. Marriage, though still almost entirely an affair of love, has
yet learnt to take £. s. d. into consideration, and none but the lowest
class would be satisfied with the kind of furniture described above.
Education has improved and is improving still more, far as it yet is from
being up even to the English standard. More leisure has also produced
novel reading with its consequent affectation of aristocratic ideas and
prejudices and disproportionate estimate of essentials and superficials.

Already each Australian capital has its 'society,' distinguished from the
[Greek characters] almost as clearly as in London or Paris. In its own
way, indeed, these societies are more exclusive than those of the older
metropolises, which from their very size obtain a certain breadth of
view. For obvious reasons the component parts are not altogether similar,
but their governing idea is as much the same as the difference of
circumstances will permit. It would be difficult to define exactly what
opens the doors of Australian society, but is the shibboleth any more
definite in London? Distinction of some kind or other must be
presupposed. If that of birth, it must either be allied to rank or have
strong local connections. Is it not the same in London, though, of
course, on an infinitely larger and grander scale? If that of wealth, it
must storm the entrance by social expenditure and pachydermatousness to
rebuff. Wealth is, of course, the predominating factor here, as rank in
London; because while in the latter case birth calls in wealth to furnish
it with the sinews of war, in the former wealth calls in birth to teach
it how to behave itself. Position is of small account, though the line is
always drawn at shopkeepers _in esse_. Provided the candidate has cut
the shop and opened an office, he can be admitted on payment of the
social fees, but only gradually and laboriously unless his wealth is
beyond criticism. The man who sells you a dozen of wine in the morning
sits by your side at Government House or Bishop's Court in the evening,
and the highest officials are not unfrequently the least esteemed
socially. A happy consequence of this social jumble is, that with certain
exceptions, which are, of course, getting more numerous as we advance in
civilization, a gentleman can do anything here and still be considered a
gentleman, provided he behaves himself as such; and the semi-menial
employments of distressed gentlewomen do not bring with them one half the
loss of social position that they generally entail in England. The
smaller community is more narrow-minded than the large, but its sight is
keener and more accurate in details. It is true that art, science, and
literature are entirely without status in Australia, but then personal
distinction of whatever kind is far more get-at-able than at home.

If it strikes a visitor as utterly ridiculous that a society, the greater
part of whose members are essentially _parvenus_, should assume the
tone and mode of thought of an old-world aristocracy, we must yet
acknowledge that that society keeps up a great many traditions of
refinement which are in great danger of being lost sight of in colonial
life. The outward and visible sign may be absurd, but the inward and
spiritual grace is none the less concealed within it. That Australian
society keeps up a number of social superstitions which might with
advantage have died out during the journey across the ocean is
undeniable, but it is also true that it preserves at least an affectation
of higher civilization. It contains the majority of the gentlemen and
ladies by birth and education in each city, and they go far to leaven the
whole lump. The _parvenu_ has the merit of seeking after better things,
and his imitation of aristocracy, if it necessarily falls far short of
the mark, at least removes him a step or two above the way of thinking
common to the class he sprang from. His daughters, with that superior
adaptability inherent in women, are quick to catch the manners of the
gentlewomen who move in their circle, and become infinitely superior to
their brothers, even when the latter have been sent to finish their
education at Oxford, or Cambridge. It is wonderful how much more easily a
lady can be manufactured than a gentleman.

Of the hospitality of 'society' in all the towns it is impossible to
speak in too high terms. The stranger has but to bring a couple of good
introductions to people who are in society, and provided he be at all
presentable, the doors of the most exclusive houses will be opened to
him. Young men of education and manners are everywhere at a premium, and
the colonies are still small enough for it to be a distinction to have
just come out from England. Unless you know your company it is always
wise to avoid asking questions about or making reference to the earlier
days of the people you meet. For all that, you will hear everybody's
history, often, I suspect, with additions and exaggerations. In such
small communities everybody knows everything about everybody else, and
the man who has gone down in the world naturally delights in telling you
of the time when he bought half a pound of sugar at Jones's shop, or when
Brown worked in his garden while Mrs. Brown was his scullery-maid,
Jones and Brown being now two social leaders.

Amongst men social distinctions are very slight. It is lawful to be
friendly with everybody and anybody in town, so long as you do not visit
at his private house. And yet for very obvious reasons gentlemen
are--except amongst the rising generation--much more common than ladies.
A number of wild young men of good family and education have been poured
out of England into Australia ever since 1852, and many of them have
become amongst the most useful and respected colonists. But until
recently there was a paucity of ladies, and the majority of gentlemen had
but the choice between marrying beneath them or not at all. Hence
frequent _mésalliances_. You meet a man at the club, and are delighted
with him in every way. He asks you to his house, and you find that his
wife drops her h's, eats peas with her knife, and errs in various little
ways. I am purposely thinking of no one in particular, but fear at least
a dozen of my acquaintances will think I am writing of them in making
this remark. And it is a sad sight to see a man dragged down in this way,
for very few men who marry beneath them can keep up the manner and mode
of living to which they were born and educated, while those who do
generally retain them at the expense of their own married happiness.
Nowadays there are certainly plenty of young ladies in the towns, but for
all that one constantly hears of the sons of clergymen and army officers
marrying the daughters of grocers and farmers who were quite recently
day-labourers. With every freedom from caste prejudice, I am yet unable
to see anything but harm to the persons directly concerned in these
ill-assorted matches, whatever the good result to the community may be.

The centre round which society revolves is naturally Government House,
but a great many people go to Government House who cannot be considered
to be in society. To have been to a Government House ball is no more,
_mutandis mutatis_, than to go to a Court ball at home. Neither will
give you admission into the inner circle; and though that circle may not
offer any but specious advantages and have but little to recommend it in
preference to three or four other societies in the town, admission into
it is coveted, and inclusion within its boundaries is as much a reality
as if its walls were of stone. In Melbourne the scattered position of the
suburbs and the extent of the population splits up the _élite_ into
several local societies, but there is yet one _crême de la crême_. In
Sydney the same thing takes place, though the local societies are less
numerous; but in Adelaide there is practically only one 'society', the
local aggregations of individuals not being deserving of any more
dignified name than 'cliques.' Of the three societies, that of Sydney is
on the whole, I think, the best. At Melbourne there are probably a larger
number of cultivated persons, but the distance between the suburbs and
the more extravavagant mode of living limits their sphere. The
Adelaidians are perhaps the most English of all in their way of thinking,
but they are also by far the most narrow-minded. For pure Philistinism I
don't think I know any town that equals it. Shut up in their own little
corner, they imagine themselves more select than Sydney and Melbourne
circles, because they are necessarily smaller. And yet for
kind-heartedness these gossip-loving Philistines are not easily to be
surpassed. As long as things go well with you they will talk against you;
but no set of people are less open to the charge of neglecting friends in
misfortune.

Class relations are, on the whole, excellent; and this is the more to the
credit of the lower classes, because the plutocracy is utterly selfish in
character, and does not interest itself in those social duties, which are
proving so effectual a prop to the nobility and landed gentry of England.
A certain animosity subsists between the squatters or pastoral lessees
and the selectors who purchase on credit from Government blocks of land,
which were formerly let to squatters. At times this breaks out in Parliament
or at elections, but in spite of a determined attempt by a section of the
Victorian press to pit the 'wealthy lower orders' against the
horny-handed sons of the soil, class feeling rarely runs high for any
length of time. The reason is, that the working-class are too well off
for the occasional high-handed proceedings of the rich to affect them
sensibly. For an agitation to be maintained there must be a real
grievance at the bottom of it; and the only grievance that the Australian
democrat can bring forward is, that having obtained the necessaries, he
cannot without extra labour obtain also the luxuries of life.

From figures I have already given as to rents, wages, and prices in
general, you will have gathered that the cost of living is, broadly
speaking, cheaper than in England as regards the necessities of
existence, but dearer in proportion to the complexity of the article.
Anything that requires much labour, or that cannot readily be produced in
the colony, is, dearer; but, on the other hand, it should be remembered
that money is more easily obtainable. Protectionist duties and heavy
freights form an effectual sumptuary tax; and as most of the duties are
_ad valorem_, first-class articles are heavily handicapped, and a
premium put upon the importation of shoddy. The wine-drinker finds that
he has to pay ten shillings a gallon on all he drinks, which should
certainly entice him to drink good wine; but the only practical result
discoverable is the small quantity of wine drunk as compared with beer
and spirits. If few people keep carriages, there are buggies innumerable
in every town; and for every man who keeps a horse in England, there are,
proportionately to the population, ten in Australia.

But perhaps the greatest element in the cheapness of colonial life is its
comparative want of 'gentility.' The necessity to keep up appearances is
not one-sixth as strong as in England. The earthen pot cannot altogether
flow down stream in company with the tin kettle, but it can more safely
get within a shorter distance of its metallic rival. Rich men live in
miserable houses and wear coats which their valets would have nothing to
do with at home; struggling men are less ashamed of struggling, and are
not made to feel the defects of their condition so keenly. In a society,
the position of whose members is constantly changing, the style of life
is of less importance. The millionaire of to-day hadn't a sixpence
yesterday, and may not have one again to-morrow. His brothers, sifters
and cousins are impecunious, and in small communities poor relations are
not easily got rid of. Constant intercommunication is thus kept up
between class and class, rich and poor; they learn better to understand
each other's position, and a clearer understanding generally leads to
mutual respect.

Again, the distribution of wealth is far more equal. To begin with, there
is no poor class in the colonies. Comfortable incomes are in the
majority, millionaires few and far between. This is especially the case
in Adelaide, where the condition of the poorer class is better, and that
of the richer worse than in any of the other colonies. In Melbourne the
masses seem worst off, and the display of riches, if not the actuality
thereof, is most noticeable. In Sydney the signs of wealth are not
wanting to an examiner, but a superficial observer would say that there
were not half as many wealthy men as in Melbourne. Few South Australians
get beyond the comfortable stage, and, on the other hand, a greater
number reach it. 'Squatting,' of course, supplies the largest section of
the wealthy class; but, especially in Melbourne, gold-mining and commerce
have contributed a large quota.

RELIGION AND MORALS.

In no country in the world is the legal freedom of conscience more firmly
established than in Australia. All Churches and sects are absolutely
equal in the eyes of the State; and any attempt to upset this equality
would be resented, not only by the united forces of all the other
denominations, but even by a majority of the only two Churches--the Roman
and Anglican--who would ever dream of aiming at supremacy. But thorough
as is the repudiation by the great majority of the community of the
principles of State aid or control of religion, the two Churches which I
have just mentioned occasionally raise their voices against secular
education by the State, and make spasmodic appeals for State
contributions to their denominational schools, which, however little
likely to succeed, are not altogether without a rational foundation. But
this is the utmost limit which State recognition, or rather the cry for
it, is ever likely to reach.

In times past the Church of England has struggled to regain the position
she formerly held in the older colonies; but now whatever efforts she
makes in that direction are confined to the ambition of being _prima
inter pares_--a position which is vigorously and even bitterly attacked
by the other Protestant sects whenever she either tries to assert it or
has it thrust upon her. These ex-Dissenters have a lively remembrance of
the yoke they endured in the old country, and even now that the spirit of
supremacy has so completely died out, they spring up to do battle against
any formality that recalls it to them. Thus, a few years ago the whole
colony of South Australia was convulsed on the question of the Bishop's
right to follow the Governor and precede the Chief Justice at official
ceremonies, and peace amongst the devout was only restored by the
Bishop's graceful relinquishment of a position to which his legal right
was undeniable. Even now the title 'My Lord' as applied to Bishops acts
as a red rag on many ex-Dissenting bulls, and they are as jealous of the
slightest official preference of the Church of England as if their
dearest religious liberties were therein involved.

Legal and even official equality do not, however, always mean social
equality; and the Church still retains a superior social position, a
shadow of her departed State authority, which to some of her old
competitors--especially the Congregationalists, Baptists, and
Wesleyans--is the more galling because they are totally destitute of the
means of assailing it. Happily, through the wise conduct of the Bishops
of Adelaide and Melbourne in meeting ministers of other denominations on
a common platform, whenever the cause of Christianity or of good and
right in any way can be served thereby, and in showing sympathy with them
in a multitude of ways, this unreasonable jealousy is losing ground and a
better feeling springing up; but there are yet too many colonists that
have felt the disabilities of Dissent in the old country who are unable
to put on the armour of forgiveness, or rather of forgetfulness in the
new. The enemy has lost his sting, but they will not allow him to live on
the remembrance of his past greatness without a reminder of his present
impotence.

This impotence is in all ways, except socially, a certain reality; for
while the ex-Dissenting bodies have thriven and waxed numerous and
powerful upon the bread of independence, the Church has languished for
want of her accustomed prop. Accustomed, not only to support their own
ministers, but also to pay tithes and Church-rates for the benefit of
their rival, the ex-Dissenters have simultaneously had their burden
lightened and, for the most part, their incomes increased by the change
of country. Besides this, they have to a certain extent felt themselves
put upon their mettle to show their superiority to their old master, and
thus they have put their best foot foremost, with the good result which
always attends such efforts. Their ministers, better paid, and holding a
higher social position than in England, have naturally become a superior
class of men as a whole to those in the old country. Every day they are
advancing, towards a higher standard of education and manners. Nor has
the gain in education and position been accompanied by, as far as I can
see, any loss in earnestness or deterioration in work. No one sect is
sufficiently preponderant to admit of that.

The friendly competition between them has been beneficial to them all;
and, in spite of rivalry, the spirit of toleration between Protestant
sects is thoroughly observed. Unfortunately, this toleration is not
extended to the Roman Catholics. Their doctrines are so directly in
opposition to the prevailing democratic and Protestant spirit of the
community, that they have come to be regarded as Ishmaelites, if not as
Amalekites, occupying ground which ought to belong to the faithful. An
Anti-Popery cry would at any time command success; and numerous and
influential as the Catholics are, directly they begin to assert their
influence all the other religious bodies unite to counteract, and end by
suppressing it. For a spice of intolerance in this respect, and for a
general Philistinism in its views on all subjects, Australia is indebted
to the middle-class Protestant sects, who form the most important element
in the community; but to them also, in a large measure, it owes its
political and social stability, and all those standard moral qualities
which are the only safe foundation for a superstructure of intellect.

Because I have spoken so warmly of the good influence which the
ex-Dissenting or Protestant sects have exercised in Australia, it must
not be supposed that the Church has been altogether a laggard. Probably
no section of the English clergy has worked harder and more manfully than
that which has been stationed in Australia. It is no fault of theirs if
their sphere has been limited and their good influence less effective
than that of their rivals. But they have been labouring under the
misfortune of being unsuited to the people and circumstances amongst whom
and which they live and work. Their sphere has lain almost entirely
amongst the upper and lower classes, and it is neither of these that
governs Australia. Where they came into contact with the middle class,
the power in the land, they have been placed in the position of the round
man in the square hole. The men of the middle class have asserted their
social equality to, if not their superiority over, their clergy; and this
an English gentleman finds difficulty in admitting, still more one who
considers himself the minister of God to the people, rather than of the
people to God. The Thirty-nine Articles do not admit of his recognising
the orders of his nonconformist brethren as equal to his own, and this
has been set down to pride. Altogether, the Anglican clergyman has been
put in a false position, to extricate him from which is taxing all the
tact of so politic a prelate as Bishop Moorhouse.

The habit of paying no direct stipend to their clergymen in England has
led to a reluctance to contribute good salaries for their support out
here, where they must rely solely upon such support; and the lowness of
salaries, if not the hardness of the work, has made the Anglican clergy
in Australia as a class inferior to their English brethren. Of course the
clergy still contains a large proportion of gentlemen within its ranks,
but on the score of ability I fancy the ex-Dissenters have the advantage.
Recognising this, Bishop Moorhouse is endeavouring both to shame
Churchmen into raising the stipend of their clergy, and to procure for
the congregations not only English gentlemen, but as far as possible
hard-working, practical, broad-minded men. He has a difficult task before
him, for already there are plenty of colonial clergymen who are either
inferior to nonconformist ministers in cultivation, or stubborn adherents
to a _régime_ which is impossible in Australia. These weeds must be
pulled out before you can sow fresh seed; and yet it is hard to call men
weeds who are serving the Church according to the best of their lights,
faithful, hard-working men, or conservative old gentlemen, who are doing
or have done a great deal of good work, and whose failings cannot be
attributed to any fault for which you can morally reproach them.

The Church is slow to adapt itself to colonial life. Amongst a
preponderating lower middle-class element Nonconformity, or rather what
is better known as Protestantism, is very popular. Low Churchmen find
they can get a better sermon at the chapel, and can be hail-fellow-well-met
with their pastor in these extraneous denominations. Thus the Church
loses many of its former adherents, and while Anglicanism still remains
the religion of the upper class, it can in no way pretend to be that of
even a majority of the community.

The Roman Catholics are on a different footing. For them no compromise is
possible, and they cannot as Roman Catholics but be a state within a
state. From time to time the priesthood incites them to aspire to
political power, but hitherto none of these aspirations have borne
practical effect, except in strengthening the hands of their adversaries.
At present they are agitating more or less vehemently in each colony for
State support to be given to their schools, declaring that it is
monstrous that they should be made to pay for a secular education of
which their religion prevents them from taking advantage.

At first a section of the Anglican party, comprising nearly all the
clergy, joined in this cry, but it became so evident that the bulk of the
population was determined not to return to the old system, that they are
beginning to desert the Catholics, and are now more wisely and with
better chance of success attempting to amalgamate with the other
Protestant bodies to obtain the admission into the State schools of
religious teaching on a broad Protestant basis; i.e., of all the
doctrines which are held in common by all Protestant denominations
(except the Unitarians), to the exclusion of all doctrines on which the
different sects differ. The bulk of the Dissenters are, I fancy,
indifferent to any junction with the Church of England, and would just as
soon have no religious teaching as what they call a 'pithless jelly-fish'
religious teaching. But on this point I think public opinion is
undergoing a change, and the formation of a Protestant party probable.
The Catholics would consider such a concession as infinitely worse than
the existing purely secular system. The omission of true doctrine would,
as regards them, amount to an assertion of false; and on their side in
opposing the Protestant party will be the Jews, the Freethinkers, and a
large number who would rather have no religious teaching than any quarrel
over it, and who are fairly satisfied with the existing state of things.
If the Protestants ever become strong enough to win the day, it can only
be at the expense of establishing a Catholic grievance so strong as to be
exceedingly dangerous. The fact that all parties are now out in the cold,
satisfies a rough-and-ready conception of justice with which the
politician has always to reckon, but that all the Protestants should get
a concession, of which it is impossible for the Catholics t

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