verywhere and to keep things
pleasant.

Outside the southernmost parts of Victoria Australia has a climate, and
the people can rejoice in midnight picnics. In the glorious southern
moonlight one can read the small print of a newspaper. The air is cool
after the overwhelming furnace of the day. The moonlight jaunts
and junketings are characteristic and pleasant, and they offer an
opportunity for the British matron who flourishes there as here--heaven
bless her--to air her sense of morals in letters to the newspapers.

The creed of athleticism speaks its latest word here. The burial of poor
young Searle, the champion sculler of the world, was a remarkable and
characteristic sight. That he was a great athlete and a good fellow
seems indisputable, but to the outsider the feeling excited by his early
and mournful death looked disproportionate. Every newspaper, from the
stately _Argus_ down to the smallest weekly organ of the village sang
his dying song. He was praised and lamented out of reason, even for
a champion sculler. The regret seemed exaggerated. At his funeral
obsequies the streets were thronged, and thousands followed in his
train. It was mournful that a young man should be struck down in the
pride and vigour of his strength. It is always mournful that this
should be so, but it is common, and the passion of the lament provoked
weariness. The feeling was doubtless genuine, but it might possibly have
had an object worthier of a nation's mourning.

Another fine athlete and good fellow is Frank Slavin, the prize-fighter.
I have acknowledged a hundred times that I belong to a lost cause. My
sympathies are with the old exploded prize-ring. Righdy or wrongly, I
trace the growth of crimes of violence to the abolition of that glorious
institution. I want to see it back again, with its rules of fair-play,
and for its contempt for pain and its excellent tuition in temper and
forbearance. I am an enthusiast, and being almost alone, am therefore
the more enthusiastic. But I grew tired of the wild exultation in
Slavin's prowess, the mad rejoicing over a victory which meant less than
it would have done in the days which I am old enough to remember. In
Australia better be an athlete than almost anything, except perhaps a
millionaire.

Take the average native and ask him what he knows of Marcus Clarke, of
James Brunton Stevens, of Harpur, Kendal, or the original of Browning's
_Waring_. He will have no response for you, but he w