institutions.'* years ago so utterly destitute, where the platypus | pare the evening meal. If the dogs are basked in the water-grass and rushes at sun good, no special attendance is required rise, and the fabulous bunyep was believed to before midnight, when a watchman takes wallow at night with appalling gasps beneath his seat in a box beside the sheep. We the moon,-in those despairing solitudes new townships arise, and already aspire to municipal duate, who, under the pressure of family have heard of a young Oxford undergra difficulties, struck out his own path to independence, and now has the management of 3000 sheep in one of the remotest stations of Australia. He kills and cooks his own mutton, saves nearly the whole of his salary, and lives in plenty and content. The love of literature, which he has carried with him from the University, cheers his days. and nights, and an occasional newspaper, and the regular packet of letters from lamp with a zest that only a gentle shepherd' in the Australian wilds can know. Many of the great grazier lords of Australia, the owners of seventy or a hundred square miles of pasture, and the proprietos of hundreds of horses, thousands of bullocks, and tens of thousands of sheep, lived formerly in a state almost as barbarous as civilized men could sink to Ancient Britons,' as was once said of them, in everything but paint.' There are now many squatter families of superior education, who, emulous of the old country, have their orchards, plantations, and ornamental gardens, and are setting a good example to such of the shepherd lords as remain in their bachelor condition, and consequently retain many of those uncivilized habits which a long residence in the bush is apt to engender. The demand for shepherds is necessarily continually on the increase, and as it is an employment which commands a fair remuneration, it is rather eagerly sought. It has one peculiar advantage-that of being suited to almost any man of respectable character. The wages of this class of persons have risen considerably since the gold discoveries. There have been emigrants who aspired to be at once flockmasters in-home, are read by the light of a tallow stead of shepherds, with very little knowledge of what they were about to undertake. A spirited' young gentleman, a short time ago, arrived at Sydney with a large capital, and a desk full of introductions. At the end of a month of fêtes and dissipation he bought 10,000 sheep, but when he had paid for them he found that he had forgotten to secure a run, and was obliged to re-sell them immediately at an enormous sacrifice to escape being utterly ruined. Many men of good education and refined tastes, who had no capital to lose, fascinated at first by the attractions of the gold-fields, but disappointed in their hopes, or unable to bear up against the exhausting toil, have taken to the bush,' and found competence and peace of mind as veritable shepherds, the fevered life of a gold-digger being succeeded by the repose of the silent plains! Life in these vast unpeopled solitudes has in it, for many, an inexpressible charm. The shepherd rises just before the sun, and after making a breakfast that would be a substantial dinner to an agricultural labourer he follows the sheep all day, just keeping them in sight, letting them wander wherever they please except into the thick scrub; at noon he directs them towards water, where they camp or lie still in the shade. As evening closes in he turns his flock homewards, and arrives at his hut just as the sun is sinking below the horizon. If he has a hutkeeper, or an assistant, his work is done for the day, and he may attend to the little garden which he has fenced in from the wilderness, or pre In tracing the progress of Australia it is impossible not to notice the services of a class of men to whom the colonies are much indebted for the rapidity of their advancement. We refer to the overlanders, or speculators, as we may define them, in stock on an enormous scale, the magnitude of whose operations was at one time so great that whole fortunes were staked in the wilderness. The occupation of these persons, who were generally in the prime of life, and often of the highest education, Etonians and University men, was to convey large flocks of sheep and herds of cattle from the interior to the coast, and to find out practicable routes from districts capable of supplying stock at a cheap rate. The attractions of this life are said to have been irresistible for certain characters. It combined the excitement of gambling with the love of adventure. Twenty thousand pounds have been known to be embarked in sheep, cattle, and horses, and driven for months over a trackless country with a precarious subsistence and uncertain supplies of water, on a journey, as it may be termed, of discovery, and amidst wastes almost as inhospitable as the ocean. But the port to which the adventure was directed once reached, its success was assured, as well as the prosperity of the station; mercantile enterprise was immediately stimulated, abundant supplies of stock were obtained on favourable terms, and the unknown pioneer who entered the district a leader of large flocks and herds, was hailed as a public benefactor. The rough-looking stranger generally underwent a speedy transformation. Having disposed of his stock and realized a profit of perhaps a hundred per cent., he resumed the habiliments of social life, public entertainments were got up in his honour, he was cordially welcomed in the first society,' and the manners of the sturdy drover were often found to be as polished as if he had just arrived from the precincts of May Fair. But settled life had few charms for him. New plans were quickly formed, new enterprises matured; and, after a few weeks of enjoyment or ennui, he plunged again into the wilderness. The overlander still exists, but the area of his operations is becoming gradually more contracted; and although it may be long before roads or railroads will completely traverse the great interior, communications with distant stations are now opened with comparative facility wherever a remunerative market is to be found. The absence of large navigable rivers was for a long period thought to offer an insuperable impediment to the progress of Australia. A great portion of its interior is a treeless desert of sand swamps and jungle, where streams are converted, in summer, into stagnant pools by the rapid evaporation. In the province of Victoria, however, this absence of water communication, which must have made the settlement of the greater portion of its territory a very slow process, has, by a beneficent arrangement of Providence, been rapidly and completely opened up, throughout its whole extent, to the industry of man. The want of rivers has been compensated by the presence of gold. Population has spread over the province, and railways traversing the length and breadth of the land are beginning abundantly to supply the means of transport. The Government of Victoria has not found the smallest difficulty in raising eight millions sterling in the London market for the construction of its iron roads, and the confidence of the mother country in the soundness of the security is manifested by the high premium which it bears. But Australia possesses several magnificent streams that are now beginning to assume important functions in the commerce of the country. The Darling is a noble river, and the Goulburn and the Murray are navigable at the same period of the year. Thus the traders of South Australia are now able to transport their goods for a distance of upwards of two thousand miles by water, discharging their cargoes and securing return freights of wool at the very threshold of the north-eastern gold fields of Victoria. South Australia is, as we before observed, par excellence the agricultural district. Of gold it can show but small returns; but it possesses other mineral resources of the most important character. The Burra Burra Mines in their extraordinary richness are equivalent to gold, and history can furnish no parallel to their productiveness. In a late number of the Adelaide Advertiser' it is said, Hundreds of miles in the northern districts abound in copper of great purity-in fact, it only requires the proper adjustment of capital to labour, and the application of both in due proportion to this colony, to result in the opening of half-a-dozen Burra Burras Our copper mines are practically exhaustless; were our population increased tenfold, and were capital supplied in proportion, all might find remunerative occupation in raising the vast accumulations of copper, which nature with lavish hand has buried beneath the soil in almost every part of this land.' Of the whole continent of Australia not more than one-fourth is, as yet, known; but that the interior contains many a fertile oasis and rivers sufficient for the purposes of a civilized people is not to be doubted. In the course of the recent exploring expedition undertaken from Adelaide, under the direction of Captain Stuart, a new country was found of a natural fertility and richness unsurpassed by any in Australia; and its extent was so great that Captain Stuart was obliged to return without having ascertained its limits, for none were visible from the furthest point that he was able to reach. The settled districts now occupy as large a space on the globe as great Britain, Ireland, and France; with a climate quite as healthful and genial as that of the latter. There is every reason to believe that the climate of the colonised portion of Australia has of late years undergone a sensible amelioration. The annual mean temperature may remain the same, or with only a slight variation, but the distressing hot winds and dust blasts are becoming, from year to year, less frequent, inasmuch as the sand hills and deserts, at least in the neighbourhood of the towns, which were one of the sources of the evil, are now under cultivation or have been built upon, and are traversed by hard metalled roads. In Victoria there are three separate districts with strongly marked atmospheric distinctions. Gipps Land, warmed by the breezes of the Pacific, shielded from the hot desert winds by a boundary of highlands, and from the chill polar winds by the opposite Tasmanian Mountains, possesses almost a tropical vegetation; but the northern districts are said more to resemble Andalusia, Naples, or Greece; and the southern and western are more peculiarly adapted for the harvests of central France and of Britain. Australia, in truth, is capable of the growth of most of the finest productions of the globe. If,' says the 'Melbourne Herald,' oranges and lemons will not flourish in Victoria, they will in New South Wales; if pine-apples, bananas, and cocoa-nuts cannot well be grown in the neighbourhood of Sydney, the three Australian colonies can be amply supplied from Moreton Bay; and similar advantages of exchange exist with regard to many other valuable products of nature.' It is pleasing to find the people of Victoria, notwithstanding the absorbing character of their pursuits, keenly alive to the attractions of nature, and intent upon the pictorial, no less than the material progress of their country. We presume a writer in the Argus' gives expression to a common sentiment on this subject. Nothing,' he says, can be uglier than most of our colonial trees, so ragged in form and monotonous both as regards the character and colour of the foliage; but if we substitute for it the numerous varieties which are capable of flourishing here, the whole aspect of the country would undergo a transformation. We should combine the vivid verdure of England with the luxuriant vegetation of southern latitudes, and a land as fair as Italy would bask beneath a sky as blue and a climate more benign. The progress of the seasons would be more distinctly marked, and new charms would be conferred on each. Spring would clothe our forests with a tender green; summer expand their foliage, so as to convert the woodland coverts into cool umbrageous shelters from the heat; and autumn, "lay. ing a fiery finger on the leaves," would impart to the landscape a richness of colour with which our eyes are unfamiliar here. The chesnut-tree would strew the ground with snow, shed from its pyramidal blossoms; and the elm, as in the days of Virgil, afford support to and receive a new grace from the clinging vine; autumnal paths would be aromatic with the odour of fallen beech and walnut leaves; and art would derive fresh inspiration, nature a periodical renovation, and British literature a new meaning, when we had surrounded ourselves with the forest trees which communicate so much both of grandeur and loveliness to the face of England.' The exploration of the interior of Australia has not yet made much progress. The numerous expeditions penetrated as far as their means permitted, but they are now known to have been utterly inadequate. The horse will probably in future be superseded by the camel, and parties will be able to pass through the central regions with fewer difficulties to surmount than heretofore. A passage across the interior once established, roads, tramroads, and ultimately railroads will follow, and a grand trunk line will doubtless at no very distant day connect the southern with the northern coasts, and open the whole of the great unknown territory to our investigation. One of the most unsatisfactory features in Australia is the excessive commercial speculation of which it is the field. In the early period of the gold discoveries such a spirit was inevitable and uncontrollable. No representations would have been sufficient to counteract the expectations of extravagant gains that would attend the first exportations to the land of gold. Enormous profits were made, but they were followed by enormous losses; and even now when a normal state of commercial intercourse may be considered as established between England and Australia, there is, it is to be feared, much reckless speculation and miscalculated adventure. The remark applies equally to commercial firms in Australia and in England. Over-trading in and to Australia appears to be an inveterate evil. We suppose no country in the world could show such a balance sheet of insolvency as the one given on the next page for the province of Victoria, and we regret to observe that time does not appear to have mitigated the evil. But there is a character of which the legitimate Australian trader has good reason to complain, namely, the exporting British manufacturer, who is justly regarded, in the colony, as a commercial nuisance. The goods sent out are generally less suited to the market than those selected by the regular importer, or by his partner or agent the standard price. How, it may be asked, can the banks do this and yet pay handsome dividends? It is believed they find it their interest to buy up all the gold at a price beyond its intrinsic value in order to prevent the merchants from making their home remittances in bullion, and thus compel them to purchase drafts at such a rate of exchange as the banks, by a mutual understanding, think proper to fix. at home; and when the consigning manufac- | importuned to accept 28. per ounce above turer, as is too often the case, breaks down, his ruin is of course attributed to a failure of remittances from the colony.' The Australian banks have, to a certain extent, the power of checking the spirit of speculation in the colony, and we believe they exercise their discretion with great intelligence, and a firmness becoming their high position and character; but the incautious or unprincipled speculator at home is comparatively uncontrolled, and, unfortunately, he has it in his power not only to ruin himself, but to baffle the most careful calculations of others. Malte-Brun, in his great geographical work, notices as a remarkable fact, that in 1816 the city of Sydney possessed a bank with a paid-up capital of 20,000. There are now in Australia nine banks, Colonial and British, with a paid-up capital of 5,898,8351. The most singular feature presented by the bank returns of the province of Victoria is the enormous proportion which the deposits bear to the number of inhabitants, being 127. 168. 3d. per head for the whole population. Several of these banks are now paying dividends at the rate of twenty per cent. per annum; one or two, for a short time, paid dividends of forty per cent. per annum, and reimbursed their original capital to the fortunate shareholders' in three years. But those were the days in which the gold-digger was, as a favour, offered 21. per ounce for his 'dust' at the gold-fields or at the bank counter, and which was, a few months after, sold in Threadneedle-street at the standard price. But the times have changed, and the successful digger is now There is another unfavourable feature in Australian society to which we must briefly advert. It has its strikes and combinations. Agitation for objects both impracticable and unjust has found support from large masses of the people. Class legislation' is a cant term too often heard in England, and is generally applied with as much ignorance as injustice; but can any legislation be more intrinsically unjust than a law for the support of self-imposed idleness, and for the prohibition of further immigration? Monopoly' is another term of reproach in the mouths of some popular leaders at home; but we have never heard any denunciation of a monopoly of labour. In Melbourne a fierce outcry was raised against the Chinese immigration, and a combination was formed for reducing the hours of labour to eight hours, on a pretence that the exhausting nature of the climate rendered it detrimental to work for a longer time. Having obtained this object, the workmen soon discarded the hollow pretext by proposing to labour extra hours for extra payment. The presumption and injustice of the movement reached its height when a demand was made on the Colonial Legislature by the labouring classes for a law prohibiting all further | troduction of convicts, the statistics of grants of public money for immigration crime show a remarkable absence of ofpurposes, lest their brethren, the struggling fences against the peace and good order of paupers and unemployed artizans of Eng. society. The new colony of Qeensland, land, should swarm over to the land of or the Moreton Bay district, is just compromise, and put an end to the extravagant mencing its independent career, and starts profits which the colonists were resolved with the fairest prospect of future wealth not to surrender without a struggle. We and importance. In this portion of Austra hear that an agitation has again been re- lia Great Britain possesses a colony that cently set on foot in Victoria, the 'cry' of stands in the same relation to her cotton, which is Eight hours' work, eight hours' that her colonies in the south do to her sleep, and eight hours' play?' wool, manufacture. It is a country most favourably situated for the growth of almost every description of tropical produce, besides having in its southern territory some fine sheep pastures, and its great resources will doubtless be speedily developed. In consequence of the enormous immigration occasioned by the attractiveness of the gold fields, there is for the present rather a redundancy than a deficiency of labour in the Australian colonies, although the construction of railways will doubtless absorb much of the surplus; and the rapid development of every description of industry precludes the supposition that any disproportion between labour and the means of employing it can be other than a very transient state of things. In the constitution conferred by the Imperial Legislature on Victoria was included a power for enlarging its basis, if desired. Mr. Haines, the Prime Minister in 1857, accordingly introduced and carried through the Legislature a reform bill, the essence of which was manhood suffrage. The new New South Wales was governed from law placed 160,000 names on the roll-an 1828 until 1842 by a representative of the enormous number, certainly, in a populaCrown, aided by a nominated Legislative tion of 512,000 souls, showing a very large Council. In the year 1842 the Legislative number of adult males in proportion to the Council was increased by the addition of whole people. Property qualification was elected members to the extent of two- at the same time abolished, but no person thirds of the whole. In 1850 the province can be registered as a voter unless he can of Victoria was separated from New South read and write. Elections are conducted Wales, and Lord Grey introduced some by ballot. The Legislative Assembly orislight changes in the constitution of the ginates all money-bills. The Assembly latter, chiefly by giving to the Legisla- may be prorogued or dissolved by the Goture a greater control over the civil list, vernor, but twelve months cannot intervene and power to alter their own Constitution, between the last day of one session and if they thought proper, by the establish- the first day of the next. The mass of the ment of an Upper House, either elective people in Victoria are ardent politicians, or nominated. South Australia has passed but the return in consideration and influence through much the same constitutional is not, we presume, yet sufficiently great phases as New South Wales and Victoria. to make a seat in the Legislature an obWestern Australia is governed by a nomi-ject of supreme ambition to the successful nated Legislative Council, The history of this colony is one of a settlement long struggling for a bare existence. It did not possess sufficient capital to make available its natural resources, which were inconsiderable, and it had a scanty population. In 1850 immigration almost ceased, and the colony existed upon the Imperial expenditure and a very limited commerce. Under these unfavourable circumstances the settlers, as the only probable mode of emerging from their difficulties, petitioned the Home Government to make the colony a penal settlement. The request was granted; and since that period the colony has progressed, exports have increased, and the farmers obtain a ready market for their stock and produce. Although this improvement has chiefly arisen from the in merchant or extensive landholder. Candidates are not always to be found by constituencies, and some Members have been treated with extraordinary liberality, and received marks of extravagant appreciation. A Mr. Cameron was elected Member for the Ovens in 1855. The electors subscribed the qualification then required, in an hour, and had his horse shod with shoes of solid gold when he rode, in procession, to attend the official declaration of the poll. That the governments which the liberality of the mother country has conferred upon these most promising and important dependencies will escape the evils inseparable from all human institutions cannot be reasonably supposed. There are questions even now unhappily open which may set |