Melbourne up to the first rank of urban scenic effect, and the riotous
Williams might, with entire usefulness, have subsided into a succession
of ornamental lakes and fish ponds.


EARLY SUBURBAN MELBOURNE.

"Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness."
--Cowper.

"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife."
-Gray.

In 1844 I lived in a little cottage at South Yarra, on the Dandenong or
Gardiner's Creek-road, then only a bush track, although considerably
trodden. I had not many neighbours. Mr. Jackson, at the far end, had
bought Toorak, but not yet built upon it; and the near end was graced by
Mr. R.H. Browne's pretty villa, in its ample grounds, sold shortly
before to Major Davidson, and constituting the palace of its time along
the road. There was a trackless forest opposite us, and more than once I
missed my way in trying to make a straight cut to the present St. Kilda.
One Sunday morning I made a discovery--a small sheet of water,
glittering in the sunshine, and I long gazed admiringly on the countless
insects and plants about its edges. It was confessedly neither broad nor
deep, and a certain tag-rag indefiniteness of outline gave occasion
afterwards to envious anti-Prahraners all about to make it out as only a
swamp. The little thing had much badgering to endure in this way in
Prahran's early progress. Later on, I saw it as a sort of central
reserve of the ever-rising Prahran. But still later it was drained off
and turned about its business, as either a profitless nuisance, or a too