e and enthusiasm, but I was unawakened until the tail-end of the
procession came. Two brakes drew up below the governor's standing-place,
and some score of grey-bearded men rose up in these vehicles and waved
their hats with vigour, whilst the whole orderly mob roared applause at
them and Lord Hopetoun himself clapped his hands like a pleased boy at
the theatre. All the men in the two brakes were elderly and grey-headed,
but as far as I could see, they were all stalwart and able-bodied, and
the faces of a good many were bronzed with years of sun and wind. Over
the leading vehicle was suspended a strip of white cloth, and on this
was painted the words, "The Pioneers." These men were the makers
of Victoria, the fathers of the proud and populous city which lay
widespread about us. There is no need to be eloquent about Melbourne.
Too many people have sung its praises already. But it is one of the
cities of the world; it has a population of over half a million; it has
its churches, its chapels, its synagogues, its theatres, its hotels; it
is as well furnished in most respects as any other city of its size; and
these grey men yet staunch in body, bronzed and bright-eyed, were among
the beginners of it. When I first visited Melbourne I was introduced to
a man who, between the present site of the Roman Catholic Cathedral and
the present site of the Town Hall, had been "bushed" for a whole day and
lost in the virgin forest. I knew already how young the city was, how
strangely rapid its growth had been; but I did not realise what I knew,
and these elderly strangers' bodily presence made my thought concrete.
That beautifully appropriate and dramatic finish struck the same chord
of wonder, but with a fuller sound.

* These Antipodean notes, dealing with the conditions of
some twenty years ago, have lost nothing of their vivid
interest by the lapse of time, and illustrate in a
remarkable manner the process of history being made for the
world, while it hardly has time to wait.

The city is commonplace enough in itself, but the Victorian, quite
justifiably, refuses to think so. Men come back from London, and
Paris, and Vienna, and New York, and think Melbourne the finer for
the contrast. In reality, it is very very far from being so; but it
is useless to reason with patriotism and its convictions. The men
of Victoria run devotion to their soil to an extreme. I was told an
exquisite story, for the truth of whi