chiefly that opens up new tracts of land for settlement in the interior
of the continent, and Melbourne brains that find the outlets for fresh
commerce in every direction. There is a bustle and life about Melbourne
which you altogether miss in Sydney. The Melbourne man is always on the
look-out for business, the Sydney man waits for business to come to him.
The one is always in a hurry, the other takes life more easily. And as it
is with business, so it is with pleasure.

If you are a man of leisure you will find more society in Melbourne, more
balls and parties, a larger measure of intellectual life--i.e., more
books and men of education and intellect, more and better theatrical and
musical performances, more racing and cricket, football, and athletic
clubs, a larger leisured class than in Sydney. The bushman who comes to
town to 'knock down his cheque,' the squatter who wants a little
amusement, both prefer Melbourne to spend their money in. The Melbourne
races attract three or four times the number of visitors that the Sydney
races do; all public amusements are far better attended in Melbourne; the
people dress better, talk better, think better, are better, if we accept
Herbert Spencer's definition of Progress. There is far more 'go' and far
more 'life,' in every sense of these rather comprehensive words, to be
found in Melbourne, and it is there that the visitor must come who wishes
to see the fullest development of Australasian civilisation, whether in
commerce or education, in wealth or intellect, in manners and customs--in
short, in every department of life.

If you ask how this anomaly is to be explained, I can only answer that
the shutting out of Sydney from the country behind it by a barrier of
mountains hindered its early development; whilst the gold-diggings
transformed Melbourne from a village into a city almost by magic; that
the first population of Sydney was of the wrong sort, whilst that which