have been better for me to have left the ship
there. My musings were in this sort; somewhat lacking, perhaps, in the
zest and cheerfulness which should pertain to a new departure in life.

I spent a few days in Sydney, chiefly given to walks through the city
and suburbs. There was a certain interest, I found, to be derived from
the noting of all the changes which a quarter of a century had wrought
in this antipodean Venice. Some of the alterations I noticed were
possibly no more than reflections of the changes time had wrought in
myself; for these--the modifications which lie between ambitious youth
and that sort of damaged middle-age which carries your dyspeptic
farther from his youth than ever his three score years and ten take
the hale man--had been radical and thorough with me. But, none the
less, Sydney's actual changes were sufficiently remarkable.

At the spot whereon I made my entry into society (as I thought), in
the studio of Mr. Rawlence, the artist, stood now an imposing red
building of many storeys, given over, I gathered, to doctors and
dentists. The artist, I thought, was probably gathered to his fathers
ere this, as my old fellow-lodger, Mr. Smith, most certainly must have
been. Mr. Foster, the editor of the _Chronicle_, had died some years
previously. The offices and premises of Messrs. J. Canning and Son, my
first employers in Sydney, were as though I had left them but
yesterday, unchanged in any single respect. But the head of the firm,
as I had known him, was no more; and his son, of whom I caught one
glimpse on the stairway, had grown elderly, grey, and quite
surprisingly stout.

There was some interest for me in prowling about the haunts of my
youth; but to be honest, I must admit there was no pleasure, even of
the mildly melancholy kind. However beautiful their surroundings, no
New World cities are in themselves beautiful or picturesque. That
which is new in them is--new, and well enough; and that which is not
new or newish is apt to be rather shabby than venerable. I apprehend
that Old World cities would be quite intolerably shabby and tumble-down
but for the fact that, when they were built, joint stock
companies were unknown, and men still took real pride in the
durability of their work. We have made wondrous progress, of course,
and are vastly cleverer than our forbears; but for the bulk of the
work of our hands, there is not very much to be said when its newness
has worn off.

I thought