nurses and children that you saw in the Parks in
London. At dusk you see the same sort of courting couples mooning
about, not knowing what next to say. In the streets you see a corps of
rifle volunteers marching along, just as at home, on Saturday
afternoons. Down at Sandridge you see the cheap-trip steamer, decked
with flags, taking a boat-load of excursionists down the bay to some
Australian Margate or Ramsgate. On the wooden pier the same
steam-cranes are at work, loading and unloading trucks.

One thing, however, there is at Melbourne that you cannot see in any
town in England, and that is the Chinese quarter. There the streets
are narrower and dirtier than anywhere else, and you see the
yellow-faced folks stand jabbering at their doors--a very novel sight.
The Chinamen, notwithstanding the poll-tax originally imposed on them
of 10_l._ a head, have come into Victoria in large and increasing
numbers, and before long they threaten to become a great power in the
colony. They are a very hardworking, but, it must be confessed, a very
low class, dirty people.

Though many of the Chinamen give up their native dress and adopt the
European costume, more particularly the billycock hat, there is one
part of their belongings that they do not part with even in the last
extremity--and that is their tail. They may hide it away in their
billycock or in the collar of their coat; but, depend upon it, the
tail is there. My friend, the doctor of the 'Yorkshire,' being a
hunter after natural curiosities, had, amongst other things, a great
ambition to possess himself of a Chinaman's tail. One day, walking up
Collins Street, I met my enthusiastic friend. He recognised me, and
waved something about frantically that he had in his hand. "I've got
it! I've got it!" he exclaimed, in a highly excited manner. "What have
you got?" I asked, wondering. "Come in here," said he, "and I'll show
it you." We turned into a bar, when he carefully undid his parcel, and
exposed to view a long black thing. "What _is_ it?" I asked. "A
Chinaman's pigtail, of course," said he, triumphantly; "and a very
rare curiosity it is, I can assure you."

Among the public institutes of Melbourne one of the finest is the
Public Library, already containing, I was told, about 80,000 volumes.
It is really a Library for the People, and a noble one too. So far as
I can learn, there is nothing yet in England that can be compared
with it.[4] Working men come here, and read at