as English as English can be. The only difference is in the prices, but
of that more anon when we go into the shops.

The river Yarra runs through the city, and is navigable as far as its
centre by coasting steamers and all but the larger sailing craft. Above
the harbour it is lined with trees and very pretty, and in spite of many
windings it is wide enough for boat-races. Below it is uninteresting, and
chiefly remarkable for the number and variety of the perfumes which arise
from the manufactories on its banks. Next to the monotony of the Suez
Canal, with which it presents many points of resemblance, I know few
things more tiresome than the voyage up the Yarra in an intercolonial
steamer of 600 or 700 tons, which goes aground every ten minutes, and
generally, as if on purpose, just in front of a boiling-down
establishment.

If the Australian cities can claim a sad eminence, if not an actual
supremacy, in the number of their public houses, of which there are no
less than 1,120 in Melbourne, I am sorry to say that they are as much
behind London in their ideas of the comforts of an hotel as London is
behind San Francisco. Melbourne is certainly better off than Sydney or
Adelaide, but bad are its best hotels. Of these Menzies' and the Oriental
are most to be recommended; after these try the United Club Hotel, or, if
you be a bachelor, Scott's. The hotels, I think without exception, derive
their chief income from the bar traffic, with which, at all but the few I
have mentioned, you cannot help being brought more or less into contact.
Lodgers are quite a secondary consideration. This is very disagreeable
for ladies. The best hotels, moreover, have no _table d'hote_--only the
old-fashioned coffee and commercial rooms; so that if you are travelling
_en famille_ you have no choice but to have your meals in a private
sitting-room. For a bachelor, who is not particular so long as his rooms