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