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In the pastoral industry all conditions of labour and living are fixed by the Arbitration Court, and good accommodation is provided for shearers. Among farmers, on the other hand, though good food is always provided, the men often have to sleep in machinery sheds. Here, as everywhere else, labour is dependent not merely on supply and demand, but on desirable conditions of employment, and it is extraordinarily interesting to see our tentative efforts in the direction of Wages Boards, and the regulation of employment, reproduced in the form of the finished article in the Commonwealth, which had no great mass of vested interest and tradition to oppose to a generous system of Labour Legislation. It must be remembered, however, that Australia can hardly yet be considered as a manufacturing country, though her industrial development has been so rapid in recent years, that the total value of manufactures already amounts to more than a quarter of the whole production of the country. It is calculated that the value of productions from all sources per head of the population exceeds that of any other country.

The Australians meanwhile, seeing the course which the future development of their country is likely to pursue, have taken time by the forelock, and in order to obviate the recurrence of the disastrous conditions in the Old World have inaugurated an elaborate system of Labour Legislation calculated to safeguard the interests of working men and women in all branches of occupation. Such measures as Wages Boards, Conciliation and Arbitration Court Systems, a minimum wage under the Factory Acts, an eight-hours day, early closing, and holiday regulations, are accomplished facts all over Australia, though their constitution is not uniform in the different states.

A Government Labour Exchange was established in 1911 to bring employer and workmen into communication. This does not, of course, include professional and clerical labour. All the departments of Public Service, including the railways, apply to the Labour Exchange for workmen, and if the work lasts for less than two months the men's fares are refunded to them.

Of course, not all Australians see the social development of their country in the same rose-coloured light. The social reformer and the moral enthusiast are seldom business men; to such the question appears in a wholly different aspect--in terms of material profit and loss.

Each state has its own industrial problems, and the question of water supply occupies the attention of all who are concerned with the development of South Australia, for the only area in the Commonwealth having an average annual rainfall of less than five inches, the Lake Eyre region, lies within the limits of this state. Throughout the more closely settled part of the state the difficulty has been met by the Government by the construction of reservoirs and the distribution of supplies.

COMPULSORY TRAINING AND SOCIAL LIFE IN ADELAIDE

We have much to learn from Australia, but in no respect more than in her admirable system of universal military training. We have already mentioned her cadet training in schools. When a boy reaches the age of fourteen he becomes a senior cadet, and a general military training is added to the physical training that is already part of his school curriculum. At the beginning of the year in which he reaches his fourteenth birthday he has to be registered, and his registration papers are sent to the Area Officer, under whose jurisdiction he now passes. This officer sees that the boys go up for their medical examination; after passing this, a boy is measured for his uniform, and allotted to his company in the senior cadet battalion of the area. The average percentage of rejections after the medical examination is only seven and a half. The senior cadet is now subject to military discipline and becomes part of the military system of the country. He has to attend four whole-day drills of at least four hours, twelve half-day drills of two hours' duration, and twenty-four night drills of one hour's minimum duration. Boys who are still at school may be formed into special companies. It is an important feature of the system that all the companies in a battalion area form one battalion independently of the numbers involved, for the battalions are training, not fighting, units. The training for senior cadets consists of physical drill, company and some battalion drill, field training and musketry. An excellent provision secures good work on the part of the cadets. At the end of each year's training an inspection takes place, and all who fail to satisfy the regular officer responsible, lose the value of their year's work, as the Act requires an additional year's training for each failure of the inefficient.

Ammunition and uniforms are supplied free. In his fourth year of training the senior cadet must satisfy the medical officer of the training area of his fitness, those falling below the standard are certified in their record books as "exempt." In the third stage of his training, from eighteen to twenty-six years old, the young Australian becomes a member of the Citizen Forces. This system is gradually superseding the older militia, which prescribed a period of three years' training only, and consequently attains so much the more an efficient military standard. The training is arranged as far as possible with a view to the convenience of the men, who are only obliged to be absent from home during a short period spent in camp every year. Parades are held on holidays, Saturday afternoons, or in the evening. In some districts Sunday training has been advocated and has raised considerable opposition, but Brigadier-General J. G. Legge, C.M.G., commanding, at the time of writing, the Division of the Australian Forces in Egypt, in an article on Australian Defence, reminds his readers that "not so many centuries ago it was the law of England that every able-bodied man should practise with the bow at the village butts on Sunday after church hours, and why not now on Sunday afternoons? This would get over the difficulty with employers quite well." Pay is given for attendance at parades in the Citizen Forces.

Under the universal training system all start as privates, and each rank competes for promotion to the one immediately above it. But it must be remembered that in Australia, as in other new countries, there are no sharply drawn class distinctions, there hardly exists an idle class, and to quote Brigadier-General Legge once more: "Brains and practical proficiency alone will carry weight with units such as we now have to lead and discipline in Australia." There is no room in that happy land for the promotion of influential incompetence.

The Australian system is working smoothly and well, and presents the spectacle of a trained and disciplined people, far indeed removed from militarism, yet with a corporate sense and a deep and zealous patriotism. Almost equally important is the fact that the Australian Government makes ample provision for all munitions of war and equipment for its forces.

It is with the boys that every country must begin. "I believe this," wrote Lord Methuen, "to be the proper solution for the national defence of this country.... It is to be noted that each colony has adopted compulsory cadet training as its foundation. We worked on Lord Kitchener's admirable Australian scheme in forming the Citizen Army in South Africa.... The physique and discipline of our nation will gain enormously if the lad is trained from the age of twelve till he reaches eighteen.... Let the nation accept the principle and the details can be made to fit in without any difficulty."

With regard to Education South Australia is, in one respect only, the least progressive of the states, for it has fixed the minimum age at which children may be employed in factories at thirteen, as compared with fourteen elsewhere. Victoria leads the way with a minimum of fifteen for girls. On the other hand, the state has been a pioneer in dealing with destitute and neglected children. The Chief Secretary of the Government appoints a State Children's Council composed of men and women. Its work is conducted on the most enlightened methods. The children, whether, as in most cases, they are boarded out, or in institutions, are judiciously looked after and provided for, till the boys have reached the age of eighteen, and the girls of twenty-one years. The work, whether paid or unpaid, of the large staff of assistants in urban and country districts, is given alike "ungrudgingly and in the spirit of the volunteer," says Mrs. Margaret Wragge, a member of the council. Thus the state is providing with foresight for the useful careers of every one of its future men and women.

In the matter of general education the system is that in force elsewhere. Primary education is free and compulsory, there is an elaborate system of training for teachers, who are given every facility for self-improvement. Technical education is provided for by the "School of Mines and Industries." The Adelaide University is of comparatively old foundation, as it dates from 1874. It has been fortunate in receiving generous endowments from local benefactors, and has handsome spacious buildings. The name of the late Sir Samuel Way, the Chief Justice, and a prominent, active citizen, will always be associated with the progress of the University.

As we have said, Adelaide is girdled with hills, of which the most important is Mount Lofty, and part of this high ground has been set aside as a national reserve, a park in perpetuity for the community; a large area left in its natural state, to show what Australia once was to the children's children of the first settlers.

The drive up the hills is not an easy one, for the road ascends steeply and the ground falls sharply away. The view over Adelaide grows more and more beautiful with every few feet of the ascent, as the semicircle of hills, with their valley and city, and the illimitable expanse of ocean are spread out below. The reserve is a vast area of sloping green lawns, more or less thickly covered with trees. Growing among the gums were the curious shea-oak, and the still more curious wild cherry, whose stone grows outside the fruit; the wattle was here only bursting its yellow balls into flower. We saw a clump of the pretty drosera or sundew, and a quantity of small purple orchids not unlike our blue squills in shape and size.

All kinds of birds live in this retreat: especially the Australian magpie with his odd conventual air, and the white cowl and black frock that make him look like a Dominican friar.

The magpies are sociable birds, friendly and companionable. They are, besides, greedy and carnivorous. An Australian lady, who was acting as our hostess on this occasion, told us she had once seen a magpie swallow three mice in succession, and sit afterwards ruminating over their digestion with the three tails hanging down from his beak.

There, too, was the laughing jackass, or to call him by his musical native name the "kookaburra," who resembles in shape and colour a large untidy jay. We heard for the first time the sweet note of the Australian thrush, and saw several redheaded parrots. The road led into a beautiful wooded glen, a favourite place for picnics.

Picnics are a great institution in Australia, and to avoid the dangers of bush fires little open-air hearths are made in such places as these, with an iron rod across them and hooks for hanging the "billy" to boil the water for the weak tea that is the invariable accompaniment of all meals. There is always plenty of dry wood in that dry climate, and generally a little shelter is put up, with a rough table and benches, sometimes a tank for rain water, but this, when it is there, has a way of being rusty. On this occasion time demanded our return, for we were lunching with one of the University professors, so we came back to the city that is only less pastoral than its hills, and were deposited at our destination by the kind new acquaintances, who had devoted a long morning to us.

Our hosts lived in a charming bungalow on the side of a hill, the garden was full of early spring flowers, jonquils and other bulbs. Their guest house was detached, as it were, in a little garden of its own, which seemed a particularly pleasant way of entertaining one's friends, giving a sense of freedom both to visitors and hosts. In the drawing-room was a big bowl of camellias, which flourish in the open air in Australia. Our host and hostess came of one of the oldest Australian families; that is, their daughter told us her grandfather came over in 1837 and her grandmother three years later. Life was a hard thing in those days. To begin with, there was the six months' voyage in the old sailing ships. In their early days of married life they had no food except salt pork and damper, or a kind of bread made without yeast, which is very nice on a picnic, but would be trying as a staple form of food. On Sundays they had rice boiled in water and raisins. "My grandfather used to be so hungry that he once shot a sitting magpie." It must, even so, have been a meal of bones and feathers.

There was something patriarchal about this pleasant, cultivated household. The settlement which the earlier generation had won from the bush remained in the family, and the descendants of its servants still served them. After lunch we were taken off to tea in the hospitable Australian way to some friends of our hosts' who were giving a tea-party. Their house lay at some distance from the town, with its back to the hills. It was approached by a park much like an English park, with eucalyptus for oaks and magpies for rooks, and the house itself was much like an English country house, and an English tea-party, with great bowls of roses and violets in the drawing-room.

It would be difficult to find anywhere a lovelier situation than the slopes of these hills, facing the far-distant sea. The entrance to the drive was heavy with the scent of stocks, and gay with masses of red geranium, a bougainvillea covered with purple flowers hung over the flight of steps, and below the garden lawns, on which the large, handsome black and white Australian wagtails were hopping about, orange trees displayed their golden fruit and glossy leaves against a background of almond blossom, and ripe limes and grape fruits.

As it was only about three miles back into Adelaide, with a good road and a fine evening, we proposed to walk home to our hotel, as we had had no exercise since we had left England. The suggestion, however, was considered so entirely impracticable as to be not worth discussing. It was merely waved aside, and the whole time we were in the country we were impressed by the fact that Australians never seem to walk. They motor, they have excellent tram services, but except up-country they don't seem to ride. An older resident at Adelaide lamented that there were actually so few young men who could ride in the district, that their numbers were insufficient to keep up the local Hunt Club.

We left Adelaide on a warm sunny August day. The long, long railway journeys from one state capital to another are made by night. The trains are dusty, the scenery monotonous, so that the tedium and discomfort are by this means minimised as much as possible. Of course, there are beautiful tracts of country, that the railroad passes through, but in a land where the eucalyptus is everywhere the prevailing form of vegetation, and water is rare, monotony is inevitable. On leaving Adelaide the main line towards Melbourne runs through charming park-like country, with green lawns and trees and deep gorges. The train climbs the Mount Lofty range with delightful glimpses of the sea, and an ascent punctuated by peculiarly sulphurous little tunnels, reminiscent of those on the Apennines.

Afterwards we crossed a spacious pastoral country dotted sparsely with homesteads, peaceful in the great calm of the luminous evening, then the swift dusk fell and blotted out all. At Murray Bridge we paused for dinner, in the old-fashioned continental way. Dinner in railway stations in Australia is simple and expeditious, and in our experience invariably excellent. It is thrown at the traveller by a miscellaneous assortment of young women, who fall over each other in their hospitable anxiety to get through the menu in time. That, however, did not suffice, for having hastily despatched our soup and the very good turkey, which is always a standing dish in Australia, and trifled with a sweet, we were summoned back to the train. Here we observed in passing along the corridor to our own carriage a bulky-looking passenger disgorging from his pockets large quantities of the dessert, which we had had no time to eat, and which he had adroitly commandeered. He was bulging with it, in fact, and was now proudly exhibiting a selection of it spread out on the opposite seat of the carriage--five oranges, three apples, and some bananas. Seeing our eye upon him he offered us a share of the spoils, as a species of hush money in kind. Oranges and apples and bananas are delicious in Australia; the dry soapy things sold for bananas in London give no idea of what a pleasant form of food a fresh banana can be.

He is no traveller who cannot sleep on any occasion under any circumstances, even in a rattling and draughty train. After a good night we woke up next morning to see an immense grassy plain stretching away to the horizon on either side. Cattle and sheep were feeding, and there were patches of plough land. For the first time the "bush" had retreated to a respectful distance.

VICTORIA

COLLINS STREET--MELBOURNE

On the day we reached Adelaide the train that took us from Port Adelaide to the city slipped by an encampment of tents, those of the naval division; and on the day we left Melbourne we saw the recruits for Australia's first contingent swing past us along Collins Street. Splendid they looked: young and strong and confident. The cars and motor omnibuses bunched up by the pavement, and the people hung out of the windows to cheer as they went by. I remember I suddenly found myself without a hat and the tears running down my cheek, when the last of them disappeared in the dust, the crowd closing in behind them. There was only a fortnight or so between that first glimpse at Adelaide that war had begun, and the assurance that Australia had grasped what was to be her share in it, when she sent her boys on the way to camp through Collins Street.

Collins Street. For better or worse, for richer or poorer, Melbourne will always be expressed to us in terms of Collins Street. It is a wide street of tall buildings, and it photographs well. It has not grown up haphazard. It is rectangular; and it exhibits Melbourne's ideal of doing the thing well, and of doing it in an official way. No street in London is very like it, though Melbourne has more in common with London than any other city we have ever seen. There is the same nucleus of business and trading, shopping and luxury; the parks almost, but not quite, set in the middle of things; and trams and suburban lines linking up nearer suburbs , and more distant ones with large houses and their gardens, and more distant ones still where the houses are cheaper. It has an official residence for the Governor-General, set, as Buckingham Palace is, in a green park; and it has a river though we will not press the point of any resemblance in it to the Thames. In short, if you were to name anything in London to us--Regent's Park or Tottenham Court Road, the Mansion House or the Natural History Museum, St. Pancras Railway Station or the Reform Club--we believe we could find you something of the kind in Melbourne. They have even a Tate Gallery, and it has pictures which might have been the choice of the Chantrey Bequest.

One word more about Collins Street, and then, having served its purpose as a simile, we may leave it. It is a London street, the artery of an organism much smaller than London, so that it is a composite. It has shops and clubs, hotels and banks, and nearly all are square and solid. It is as wide as Kingsway, but less uniform than that thoroughfare will be; as busy as Cheapside, but less heterogeneous; as popular as Regent Street, but one of less specific attractions; and the one characteristic of it which is unmistakable is that it is the principal street of a big city. That is what Melbourne is. It is a city, a city where money is made, and big business goes on. It is to Melbourne and to Collins Street that you must come if you are to talk to the men who are planning and financing and ordering the Australia of the future.

There is a Melbourne of another kind, just as there are many Londons. There is Melbourne of the University, nestling in its gardens and secure in the strongest foundation a University can have, the solid research of its professors and teachers. It would not thank us for any forced comparison with the ineffable charm that the years and memories have brought to our own older Universities; but it has their air of unself-consciousness and breeding.

There is Melbourne, too, which sets the fashion; and which, if the word were not so detestable, forms the "society" of the capital. But "society," so misused a word elsewhere, is more vague in its application in Australia than elsewhere. Government House is the vortex about which it eddies; and perhaps cards for Government House garden parties, or receptions, or invitations to Government House luncheons and balls may be the fount of as much rivalry and as many heartburnings as in the oldest capitals of Europe. Certainly Government House maintains a ceremoniousness which is in extraordinary contrast to every other usage in this land of democracy. Ladies curtsey to the Governor-General's wife and to the Governor-General, as if they were of Royal blood, instead of the representatives of Great Britain. The Governor-General goes out to lunch attended by an aide-de-camp; nobody would go to a reception at Government House in anything other than the most official dress he was entitled to wear; nor would any lady go in anything that was a stitch less than the best of her dresses--for Government House is the Court. And yet ... one day when one of us was lunching at the Melbourne Club, the Governor-General came into the luncheon room and sat down at our round table, with his aide and a friend, and the other lunchers at the same table, who all more or less impartially went on with their own conversation or exchanged a word or an answer with the Governor-General, were an editor, a doctor, two business men, a lawyer and a geologist. There was somebody else whose profession I have forgotten, but the luncheon party was very typical of the social life of Melbourne, and typical, too, I think, of what is the most vivifying and vigorous thing in Australian intercourse and converse.

In England, not altogether as a consequence of our social conventions, though they are the chief thing, the people of one social circle know very little of one another; and doctors, lawyers, artists, or literary or scientific men, merchants, men in commerce or finance, tend to limit their intercourse to those of the same profession as themselves. There are exceptions to this rule, of course; and it grows less rigid. But in Australia such limitations hardly exist at all. If you have a job of any kind, in letters, or politics, or science, or commerce, or trade, and are doing it well; and if you are a man of intelligence--then you stand on your merits, not on your social position, and you are of the same standing as anyone else. A few years ago in an English novel written by a lady of talent and insight, a duke is made to say, as almost his last utterance on his death-bed, "We big-wigs have a good time." Such an incredible observation would appear even more fatuous in Australia than in Eaton Square; for there are no "big-wigs" in Australia.

It would be hard to say who or what takes their place in such a democracy: talent perhaps; ability in such public affairs as bring a man into relation with European politics or with the home country, though in politics or affairs men do not stand apart from their fellows as they do over here. In England, or in any European country, the men of affairs are known to their countrymen chiefly by their photographs. How many people, for example, in England have ever seen Sir Edward Grey? But in Australia the public men are not photographed; they are known to everybody and are spoken to by everybody. The only exceptions are the Governors. If they are men of great ability, a limited divinity hedges them, but they are the only people thus fenced in, and the fence can be seen through if they are not first-rate. If there are no big-wigs in Australia, the land is knee-deep in critics.

In the absence of any deeply separated social circles in Melbourne, there is a social life of unbounding vitality and capacity for enjoyment. During our stay there, despite the outbreak of war, a great deal of ceremonial festivity was taking place, so that abundant opportunity was given for surveying Melbourne in its ball-dress at Government House, or in its silk hat and morning coat at official garden parties. One impression left on the mind and the eye was that these things were sufficiently uncommon and sufficiently enjoyed for no one to leave them out if they could attend them. I have a recollection of good-tempered struggles for hats and coats at the City Museum and Library , such as obliterated every other impression--even the impression of that massive and graceful City Library with its domed roof and white arcading; or of the serried multitudes coming and going from the supper rooms. There was the hunt for the motor-car, too ... in a sudden night wind that brought stinging dust from the north ... and there were the throngs of ladies quite cheerfully sacrificing their satin shoes as they walked along the streets to the cars, sometimes to the street cars. For if you go home by street car in Melbourne it makes no difference to your social standing.

Gay, cheerful, social, hospitable Melbourne. It is full of memories of kindnesses, of hospitality, of dinner parties, of gay and--forgive the blighting phrase--of that cultivated converse which our better instructed grandfathers called "good talk"; of houses which were luxurious and homes which were deeply comfortable--and of one house, to which, however long and tiring the day, we always came back as those who come back home.

SOCIAL LIFE IN MELBOURNE

The country surrounding Melbourne was far more populous than anything we had yet seen. The land was very flat, and the plain was extremely bare, even denuded; there was hardly a tree to be seen on the great expanse; scattered over it were innumerable little yellow boulders, thousands of them. Sometimes they had been laboriously collected and heaped up to form walls. These are the recollections which the approach to the Victorian capital by railway from the west leaves in the mind. The entrance to Melbourne itself is much like that to any other great seaport. The masts of the ships showed above the houses, the air was cool and fresh, and invigorating after the night in the train. Melbourne was in fact the coldest place we visited in Australia, but even here heavy winter clothing such as one would wear in an English winter is unnecessary in that dry air and brilliant sunshine.

Our hosts had sent their car to meet us, and we spun out of the station yard into a city of immensely wide straight streets, sometimes rather sharply ascending and descending, with handsome tall buildings, some of which had a quite venerable air; the cathedral of St. Paul's, for instance, is grimy with age. From a local station people from the suburbs were pouring out to their day's business, as if it were a London terminus, and there was little to distinguish them in general appearance from the London morning throng. We gleaned a rapid impression of gardens and parks and open spaces, and after crossing the Yarra River, arrived in the pleasant green hilly suburb of South Yarra, where we were to stay. The car drew up at a large bungalow in a sloping street of bungalows each in its own garden. A broad verandah ran round the one-storied house; at the entrance to the garden a pepper tree had been cut back and a rose trained over it. These lovely trees, with their grey fern-like foliage and strings of red berries are very common in Australia, but they are untidy things in a garden, with obstreperous roots. Geraniums were in flower even here, and a pink camellia bush.

The door was flung open by our hostess almost before we had had time to ring the bell. We had arrived unseasonably early in the morning, rather chilly, rather tired, with that uncomfortable, unkempt sensation attendant on a hurried toilet in a rocking train, breakfastless, very hungry, and it is only on such an occasion that the whole-hearted warmth of an Australian welcome can be appreciated at its true worth, a welcome no less generous to strangers than to recovered friends. Our host and hostess in Melbourne had never seen us before, yet not only were we made to feel as if we belonged there, as if their house was a home in which we had the claim of longstanding friendship or relationship, but though they were both very busy people of many engagements, their car was placed at our disposal during our visit, and they themselves made use of the very efficient Melbourne tram service. Perhaps this extraordinary and generous kindness, which we met everywhere, differing only in degree, not in kind, exists in Australia as nowhere else.

On the afternoon of our arrival in Melbourne, we went to a tea given by the Women's Union at the University. Australian women are in a very superior position to their British sisters; they have the vote, and their share in political life takes place quite unobtrusively and as a matter of course. Women's suffrage was adopted in Victoria comparatively recently, and the state is now governed by the vote of all those over the age of twenty-one who have not been convicted of felony. Consequently there is no aggressive "Women's Movement," though women have their own separate clubs in all the large towns, and do useful and active work both in connection with public bodies concerned with their interests, and in political organisation. We were frequently asked with surprised incredulity if the newspaper reports of suffragette activities at home were not wholly untrue or at least greatly exaggerated. To women in peaceful possession of the vote, the exasperated fuss on both sides about conferring what seems to them so simple and obvious a benefit was wholly incomprehensible. It appears that in Australia it has had very little effect on the balance of parties except that of strengthening the Labour vote to some extent.

An active and experienced citizen of Melbourne has recorded his own conviction that the measure "has produced little or no change for better or worse in the general course of legislation. It has not purified public life in the sense in which the term is generally used; it has not enabled women to obtain adequate treatment in the subjects they are specially interested in. It has in my opinion made but one substantial alteration--the capacity of women to organise political associations has been demonstrated repeatedly, and the interest of women in public affairs is in conspicuous evidence." Working women are, however, already in a better position in Victoria than in any other part of the world. As long ago as 1873 an Act was passed forbidding the employment of any female for more than eight hours in any day in a factory. Nowhere is the factory worker, whether man or woman, better looked after as to his wages, personal safety, health, and moral surroundings than in Victoria. A little over 33% of all the women in the state are employed in factories, earning an average wage of 17s. 4d. a week.

In any comparison of labour conditions at home and in Australia it must be borne in mind that though foodstuffs cost about the same, imported manufactured goods of all kinds are dearer. The higher wages are not therefore proportionately greater in purchasing power. They have, however, been much affected by the institution of Wages Boards. These were first established in 1896 with the definite object of raising the wages of women employed in the clothing trade, especially the sweated home workers. The measure had the immediate effect of raising wages in this trade. The Boards, which are composed of equal numbers of employers and employed, elect a neutral chairman, discuss all the aspects of the trade, and fix a minimum wage accordingly. The system has now been gradually extended to practically all urban industries, in which wages have in consequence steadily risen. The Wages Board, says the Chief Inspector of Factories, "has now come to be regarded pretty generally as the most nearly perfect system of fixing fair wages and conditions that has yet been devised." It is a cardinal principle of the Victorian system that, having provided the workers with the means of securing a fair living wage, it takes no cognisance of strikes. It is claimed that the Victorian method has had the result of preventing strikes.

But to return to the Women's Union tea at the University. Our hostesses were representative of Melbourne's social activities, and it was a pleasant and interesting festivity, as well as an introduction to the University, the centre of Australian intellectual life. The University has done much to leaven Melbourne society, and has been fortunate in securing first-rate men, not merely in point of scholastic attainment, but in an equally invaluable social refinement. A splendid growing country like Australia should have only the best we have to send, whether as teachers or governors, nothing less is worthy of her deserts and importance as a factor in the empire. The University is the coping-stone of the educational machinery of Victoria, where the whole of the primary and secondary education is in the hands of the state, with the exception of certain schools owned by religious corporations. There is an admirable system of small rural schools, and teachers earn promotion by good work done in them. There are also a number of technical schools and Agricultural High Schools--an interesting development--one of which we visited.

The University Buildings stand in tree-planted grounds, with the imposing Wilson Hall in the foreground. It is used principally for social purposes and for examinations, and is an ecclesiastical building, like a large college chapel, spacious and well proportioned. In front of the open doors stands an immense Moreton Bay pine, one of the handsomest of Australian trees, evergreen, like all the native vegetation, large and shapely with glossy dark leaves. It is so called from the beautiful Queensland bay on which Brisbane stands, where it grows in great profusion. On the lawn beyond, two great black swans were feeding, looking oddly incongruous. The various schools have their main lecture rooms and laboratories grouped round an artificial lake in the middle of the grounds. Residential denominational colleges are erected on grants of land within the University precincts. One of them, the Methodist College, we visited through the kindness of the wife of the President, who showed us over the buildings.

It was vacation, and all was swept and garnished, but we saw the little chapel, the dining-hall, library, and the men's rooms. All was very pleasant and comfortable, with fine views over Melbourne, and all was as unlike as possible from the dreamy, stately old halls where our English boys go and learn to be luxurious and extravagant at home, and also learn other things which after all cannot be learnt elsewhere. We were present at the conferring of some honorary degrees at the University. It was a gay and picturesque scene, with the doctors' scarlet gowns on the platform; and what we missed in the ancient academic atmosphere that gives to such functions their impressiveness at home, was compensated for by the lively interest and enthusiasm of the visitors by whom the hall was filled. The ceremony was incidentally memorable from the fine enunciation and beautiful voice of the Professor who presented the candidates to the Chancellor.

After the degree ceremony we went on to the Town Hall, where the Lady Mayoress was giving a tea-party. Mayors and Mayoresses are very important people in Australia; they are lavish in their entertainment of strangers, and are the centre not only of the civic life of a town, but often of its social life as well, the two things being usually indistinguishable. The Melbourne Town Hall is worthy of a great city that is the seat of government, and the rallying point of all the different phases of life on the continent. One sumptuous council chamber is decorated with Australian woods, many of them very beautiful, the central panels of black wood especially, which were delicately variegated like the back of an old fiddle.

The same day we went to an evening party at Federal Government House. Melbourne is the seat of the Federal as well as of the State Government; and the balls or receptions at Government House bring together what in a less democratic country one would call the society of the state. Society in Melbourne is very cultivated and agreeable. It is more settled, more homogeneous, more cosmopolitan than elsewhere in Australia, so that here, if anywhere, one loses the sense of a new country, which is at the same time part of its charm. The women and girls in Melbourne are also prettier, and more prettily dressed than elsewhere, and it makes a cult of charming-looking, elderly, white-haired matrons, wearing the dignity of their years becomingly. Not that pretty women and girls are not to be found everywhere, but Melbourne has a colder, more bracing climate, and is more in touch with the outside world. Two facts that tell in complexions and clothes.

BALLARAT

Nobody has seen Australia who has not seen a goldfield, and though with a certain reluctance, for the way was long and the trains unprovided with restaurant cars, we decided to visit one from Melbourne, whence, as one counts distance in Australia, they were easily accessible. The choice seemed to lie between Bendigo and Ballarat; they were equal as far as we were concerned, but there was something about the name of Bendigo that expressed a smug prosperity, while Ballarat suggested something of the unbridled spirit of adventure and undisciplined audacity of the pioneer. We elected in favour of Ballarat. We started very early in the morning, as you have to do in Australia if you want to get anywhere, feeling full of enterprise and prepared for any hardship. There had been a riot in Ballarat, they told us, quite a serious affair, with military intervention. The line to Ballarat runs at first through the flat country that we had already traversed, covered with the odd little yellow boulders, which a well-informed passenger now assured us were formed of lava. There had been a lava flow all over the plain in some former geological period, he said, and the lava had gradually broken up into these little yellow boulders. The line then crosses the Bacchus Marsh Valley; this neighbourhood is the centre of the milk and butter trade, and china clay is also found in the district. Farther on we passed through the beautiful Werribee Gorge, remarkable for having been "eroded through glacial conglomerate into the underlying Ordovician sediment," a well-informed passenger hastened to explain to us. While we listened respectfully an immense bird appeared hovering, lonely, majestic, above the gorge. "Aquila audax," cried the too well-informed passenger eagerly; the largest known eagle. "How do you spell "Hordax?" inquired a lady. This tacit reflection on his pronunciation so discomfited him that he retired to another carriage, and we proceeded on our way unenlightened.

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