A walk down Collins Street or Flinders Lane would astonish some of the
City Croesuses. But if a visitor really wishes to form an idea of the
wealth concentrated in Melbourne, he cannot do better than spend a week
walking round the suburbs, and noting the thousands of large roomy houses
and well-kept gardens which betoken incomes of over two thousand a year,
and the tens of thousands of villas whose occupants must be spending from
a thousand to fifteen hundred a year. All these suburbs are connected
with the town by railway. A quarter of an hour will bring you ten miles
to Brighton, and twelve minutes will take you to St. Kilda, the most
fashionable watering-place. Within ten minutes by rail are the inland
suburbs, Toorak, South Yarra, and Kew, all three very fashionable;
Balaclava, Elsterwick, and Windsor, outgrowths of St. Kilda, also
fashionable; Hawthorn, which is budding well; Richmond, adjacent to East
Melbourne, and middle class; and Emerald Hill and Albert Park, with a
working-class population. Adjoining the city itself are North Melbourne,
Fitzroy, Carlton, Hotham, and East Melbourne, all except the last
inhabited by the working-classes. Emerald Hill and Hotham have handsome
town halls of their own, and the larger of these suburbs form
municipalities. Nearly everybody who can lives in the suburbs, and the
excellence of the railway system enables them to extend much farther away
from the city than in Adelaide or Sydney. It is strange that the
Australian townsman should have so thoroughly inherited the English love
of living as far as possible away from the scene of his business and work
during the day.

The names of the suburbs afford food for reflection. Yarra is the only
native name. Sir Charles Hotham and Sir Charles Fitzroy were the
governors at the time of the foundation of the municipalities which bear
their names. The date of the foundation of St. Kilda is evidenced by the