, well-built
and thriving cities, they are strikingly in contrast with each other.
One is the scion of a lordly house, "to the manner born"--the other,
the _parvenu_ of yesterday, whose gold makes his position. Melbourne
is to all intents a European city, with its boulevards and regular
streets, whole blocks of costly stores and princely dwellings, and
environed by elegant villas and country-seats adorned with gardens,
vineyards and choice shrubbery. It has its English and Chinese
quarters, the latter as essentially Chinese as if built in the
Celestials' own land, and brought over, mandarin buttons, tiny
teapots, opium-pipes and all, in one of their own junks. The English
quarter contains, besides the government buildings, several schools,
hospitals, churches and benevolent institutions, the public library, a
polytechnic hall, a national museum, theatres and opera-houses, all
built in a style alike elegant and substantial. The library only ten
years after it was opened numbered 41,000 volumes, and has since been
largely increased. Science rather than literature, and practical
utility more than entertainment, have been kept in the ascendency in
the management of this institution. The hall is open for daily
lectures, and some valuable telescopes and other apparatus belong to
the institution. The cabinet of natural history contains many rare
specimens that serve to elucidate the ancient and modern history of
the country, especially in regard to some of the animals and
vegetables indigenous to the island. The museum is built on a
commanding eminence, and from its spacious windows one sees clearly to
the opposite side of Hobson's Bay.

[Illustration: THE ENVIRONS OF MELBOURNE.]

The city is not built on the sea-coast, but two or three miles from
the shore, its port being Sandridge, with which it is connected by
railway. Vessels of all nations crowd the harbor, and the streets are
as full of busy life and gay frivolity as those of Havre or
Marseilles. The drives in the environs of the city are replete with
picturesque beauty--meadows dotted with many--tinted flowers and
magnificent forest trees, about which are festooned flowering vines
and creepers. Their thick branches are the resort of cockatoos,
parrots and paroquets in brilliant plumage, and perhaps most beautiful
of all, because most rare, sparrows, not clothed, like ours, in sombre
gray, but rejoicing in vestments of green and gold. But brilliancy of
plumage is the