ole house is bound to be at
sixes-and-sevens, and all its occupants, including herself, in anything
but a pleasant state of mind. If a woman is worth her salt, she will not
mind these things, or rather she will make the best of them; but it is
not every English young lady whose love for her husband, present or
future, will carry her through these domestic hurricanes; and, if not,
she had better not come out here, although husbands are plentiful. Except
amongst a very small class who can afford luxuries, the
girl-of-the-period is out of place in Australia.

DRESS.

I doubt whether in my preceding letters I have made the distinction
between Melbourne and its sister capitals sufficiently plain. I shall
perhaps best convey it by saying that Melbourne is quasi-metropolitan,
while both Sydney and Adelaide are alike provincial in their mode of
life. In the matters of which I have been writing, the difference has
hardly been sufficient to warrant a separate treatment; but with regard
to dress, it becomes so noticeable, that not to treat of Melbourne
separately would convey a false idea. For in dress it is not too much to
say that the ladies of Melbourne are luxurious-a charge which could
scarcely be brought against Australians in any other particular that I
can think of. And take them all-in-all, they do not dress badly; indeed,
if one considers the distance from Paris, and the total want of a
competent leader of fashion, they may be said to dress well, especially
of late years. The highly fantastic and gorgeous costumes for which
Melbourne used to be notorious are fast disappearing. Successful diggers
no longer take their wives into a shop, and ask how much colour and stuff
can be put into a dress for fifty pounds. Already outrageousness is
confined to a few, and when I say that it is generally agreed to be 'bad
form,' you will understand that its death-blow has been struck and the
hearse ordered. Bright colours are still in vogue, but they are not
necessarily loud or unpleasant beneath the austral sun, and the act of
combining them is beginning to be understood. When one remembers how
their houses are furnished, and what their general style of living is it
is astonishing to find Melbourne ladies dressing so brilliantly and yet
with so little vulgarity.

But it is not among the _grand monde_--if the term be not ridiculous as
applied to Victoria--that you must go to discover taste. I am not sure
that, class for class, the ri