the Public Library.
The commodious reading-room was amply supplied with books, magazines,
and newspapers; and here I amused myself for an hour in reading a new
book. Over the mantel-piece of the large room hangs an oil painting of
Prince Alfred, representing him and his "mates" after the visit they
had made to one of the Ballarat mines. This provision of excellent
reading-rooms--free and open to all--seems to me an admirable feature
of the Victorian towns. They are the best sort of supplement to the
common day-schools; and furnish a salutary refuge for all sober-minded
men, from the temptations of the grog-shops. But besides the Public
Library, there is also the Mechanics' Institute, in Sturt Street; a
fine building, provided also with a large library, and all the latest
English newspapers, free to strangers.

The features of the town that most struck me in the course of the day
were these. First, Sturt Street: a fine, broad street, at least three
chains wide. On each side are large handsome shops, and along the
middle of the road runs a broad strip of garden, with large trees and
well-kept beds of flowers. Sturt Street is on an incline; and at the
top of it runs Ledyard Street, at right angles, also a fine broad
street. It contains the principal banks, of which I counted nine, all
handsome stone buildings, the London Chartered, built on a foundation
of blue-stone, being perhaps the finest of them in an architectural
point of view. Close to it is the famous "Corner." What the Bourse is
in Paris, Wall Street in New York, and the Exchange in London--that is
the "Corner" at Ballarat. Under the verandah of the Unicorn Hotel, and
close to the Exchange Buildings, there is a continual swarm of
speculators, managers of companies, and mining men, standing about in
groups, very like so many circles of betting-men on a race-course.
Here all the mining swindles originate. Specimens of gold-bearing
quartz are shown, shares are bought and sold, new schemes are
ventilated, and old ones revived. Many fortunes have been lost and won
on that bit of pavement.

One man is reckoned as good as another in Ballarat. Even the cad of a
baker's boy has the chance of making "a pile," while the swell broker,
who dabbles in mines and reefs, may be beggared in a few days. As one
of the many instances of men growing suddenly rich by speculation
here, I may mention the following. A short time since, a cobbler at
Ballarat had a present made to him of