tickets are not issued except on Saturdays, and except to such places as have a competing steam service, such as Warrnambool or Belfast. The speed is not high, and to our notions there are very few trains, but probably enough for the present traffic. Whenever the inhabitants of any particular district think they would like a railway, they get their representative to vote for it, and if he can persuade a sufficient number of other representatives to vote for it, the railway is made. For some time past the people of the small town of Buninyong thought they would like a line from Ballarat, from which it is distant seven miles. As it is not really required, in consequence of a good service of public conveyances between the two places, they did not succeed for some time. At length, during the last session, their representative managed to get 35 others to vote for it, and the line is now to be made. Each of these 35 may in their turn require the vote of the member for Buninyong on some similar occasion. But the actual management of the railways and of the Civil Service has been put beyond the reach of political influence by the appointment of Railway and Civil Service Commissioners, who are permanent officials. When a line is to be made the Railway Commissioners go over the ground and fix the spots for stations &c. Every porter has to pass on examination before he can be appointed. There are only first and second classes. On the suburban lines the first class are about as good as our second. As a fact, a number of second class carriages sent out from England are here used as first, the words "second class" being ingeniously concealed by a narrow strip of wood. Members of Parliament have a free pass over all lines. In Victoria the gauge is 5ft. 3in. In New South Wales it is the same as ours, viz., 4ft. 8-1/2in. Consequently travellers between Melbourne and Sydney have to change trains at the border.

In Victoria there is intense opposition to Free Trade. The people would rather make bad boots and shoes for themselves than import cheap and good ones from England. Of course I use Free Trade in the sense of the opposite of protection of native industries. Advocates of Protection appear to me to confound the end with the means, as if manufacturers existed for their own sake and not in order to produce. I have seen the commercial competition between various countries compared with a horse race. Just as some horses are handicapped, so customs duties must be levied on the productions of certain countries to give the others a fair chance! The comparison would be relevant if the object of a handicap were that the best horse should win, but the race itself is the object. Bastiat has reduced this view of commerce to an absurdity in his famous petition. It is a petition supposed to be presented by the dealers in oil, tallow, lamps, &c., in Paris, who request that all shutters, windows, and other apertures for light may be closed against the sun, which spoils their business by shining so brightly during the day. If wheat rained from heaven some people would tax it to protect the farmers. But Free Trade may be made an object of worship in itself, and can then do nothing but harm. It may be made a rule of life, not merely a rule of trade. The satisfaction of material needs is most necessary, and lies at the bottom of civilization, but it is not therefore the most important, and it is quite conceivable that the moral advantages to be derived by a community through reliance on their own energies, may more than compensate for the higher price of particular articles. It has been found not to be good for the human race to have things made too pleasant. The West Indian negroes, "who toil not, neither do they spin," but pick the fruits of the earth ready to their hands, are not the most exalted specimens of mankind. It may be a good thing for a man not to have things too cheaply, if owing to this he is stirred up to work, and can get money enough to live. Free Traders argue that free trade will prevent war, by making evident the inconveniences thereby occasioned to commerce, yet history has never shown that such considerations have been of much weight when strong national feelings are aroused. Nor is it, in my opinion, a desirable thing that they should have a decisive effect. With this class of arguments Free Traders are powerless to deal.

The absence of caste is a noticeable feature in Australian life. Any man, whatever his original position, can rise to the highest offices, and, as a matter of fact, the ministers are frequently tradesmen. None the worse for that, of course; but it was amusingly illustrated in the Assembly the other day, when one of the members—a "chartered libertine," in regard to speech, and they do speak very plainly—boasted that he was a member of a club to which none of the ministers could belong. "They are decent people," he said, "but not professional men, and the membership is limited to them." Domestic servants are particularly independent as a class, and many people do without them altogether rather than submit to pay very high wages for little work. An ordinary cook will receive about £1 a week. They rarely say "sir," but usually plain "mister," which is to most people not a pleasant way of being addressed. They seem to take a pride in addressing their employer (I must not say master or mistress) by their surname, as Mr. or Mrs. So-and-So, as often as possible. What Emerson calls the "fury of expectoration" is very rife throughout the colonies. If a floor or carpet is particularly clean the temptation to spit upon it is too great to be resisted. In the Court-house at Adelaide is a special notice requesting people not to spit on the floor. I suppose this habit is connected with smoking, and smoking with drinking. All day long the hotel bars are besieged by crowds of men demanding "nobblers," like flies round a pot of honey, and I have heard that a hotel proprietor does not care to see his customers go beyond the bar, as so large a proportion of his profit is derived from it. In a debate in the Assembly, on the new Licensing Bill, one orator referred contemptuously to "miserable tea drinkers." "We do not want," he said, "to be Chinafied; the more men drink the better they are." He would find many outside the House of the same opinion. Per contra it was urged that total abstinence produced strength because "Samson was a teetotaller!"

Considering the comparatively small size of Victoria, it is much more thickly populated than any other colony. Its population is very nearly a million, on an area about as large as Great Britain, giving about 10 persons to the square mile. The chief towns after Melbourne are Ballarat, East and West, with a population of 37,000, and Sandhurst, with 28,000. Next comes Geelong, which, with its suburbs, has 21,000. For purposes of representation, the country is divided into 14 provinces, from each of which three members are returned to the Legislative Council. It is divided into 55 electoral districts, which return 86 members to the Legislative Assembly. The country is also divided into 37 counties, but what purpose this division serves I have not been able to ascertain. I have made two visits into the country, one to the neighbourhood of Ballarat to the north-west of Melbourne, the other into Gipp's Land, which is to the east. I went to Gipp's Land to pay a visit to a gentleman well known to the racing world, who has a large estate in the neighbourhood of Sale. Victorians are nothing if not fond of sport. We have a good many races at home, but I think they are exceeded in number by those in Victoria. My host had been engaged in horse-racing more than forty years, and in these circles he is much respected; because he always, as they say, runs his horses to win, and