120,000 volumes,
and is rapidly increasing. A new wing is being built to make more
room. The trustees have acted with a view to acquiring books of real
worth, and no book is selected unless it has made its reputation.
Consequently the amount of fiction is small. George Eliot's novels
have only just been admitted. The library is not supported by a
local rate, but by the Government. The same is the case with all the
public libraries throughout the country. However small a township
is, you will probably find a public library and a mechanics'
institution. In the same building with the library are the Picture
Gallery and the Museum. In the former are Miss Thompson's "Quatre
Bras," Long's "Esther," and "A Question of Propriety," the latter
bought off the easel, besides other good paintings. In the vestibule
are plaster casts of some of the aboringines, labelled, "Martha,
aged 14;" "Thames, aged 50;" and so on. They are all remarkably
ugly, but vary in degree, some being actually repulsive. There are
now only a few hundred natives in the whole of Victoria, and they
are miserable creatures, not to be compared, for instance, with
those in the north-west, where in some places the average height of
the natives is 6ft. The library is open daily (except Sunday) from
10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Some time ago the trustees did open the Library
and Picture Gallery on the Sunday, but after five Sundays Parliament
sat, and the Sabbatarians then immediately passed a vote prohibiting
it, although the measure had been very popular. In fact, nothing is
open on Sundays. Public-houses are shut, except to that remarkable
animal--the _bona fide_ traveller. A few weeks ago there was a
deputation to the Premier, urging him to stop all Sunday trains.
This was supported by some ministers who are themselves in the habit
of using trains on Sunday, but they did not find the time ripe for
such a change.

I had an interesting conversation with the learned and accomplished
Town Clerk of Melbourne (Mr. Fitzgibbon) upon the condition of the
legal profession here. The two branches, barristers and solicitors,
are not amalgamated, but the tendency, as in England, is in that
direction. Indeed, in the last session of Parliament a bill to
amalgamate them, after passing the Legislative Assembly, was only
lost by one vote in the Upper House. Still, even in places where a
fusion has taken place, as in Tasmania, I found that, in fact, they
are kept distinct, that is to say o