Not that the colonists—in the towns at any rate
—are otherwise than alarming dandies
themselves, as the caricatures sufficiently testify, but
the new comer is naturally a few months ahead
of them; and this it is not easy to forgive.
The ladies especially, it appears from all accounts,
indulge in a degree of luxury in matters of millinery,
which out-Parises Paris, and throws even
New York into the shade. Only the other day
a writer who stayed some time among them, told
us of a thirty guinea bonnet being seen at a
pic-nic. The Lucy Hocquets of London or Paris
would be puzzled to produce a head-dress costing
this amount of money, unless they trimmed it
with sovereigns or Napoleons. But it is
true that a new comer has a very difficult part
to play. The slightest assumption will crush
him in colonial society. There is an instance
known, indeed, of a gentleman and lady who
went out under most favourable auspices; with
a very fair amount of capital and the very best
introductions. But they managed to make themselves
unpopular on board ship by not associating
with the other passengers. Their reputation
landed with them; their introductions went for
nothing; and their money would not last for ever;
a few months afterwards, the gentleman who
had planted himself upon his social position was
found selling lucifer matches in the streets! On
the other hand, there seems to be no doubt that
a "new chum" who, in popular phraseology, "has
no nonsense about him," and takes kindly to his
position, very soon finds friends, and by the time
he becomes an "old chum," has become a
prosperous member of the community.

Children, as a general rule, exhibit a wonderful
degree of precocity in Australia, and "the
rising generation" furnishes a fertile theme for
the local satirist.

Another favourite subject for cuts is more
peculiarly colonial. "Native pride" becomes a
fruitful theme for satire. The aborigines,
although they occasionally consent to be civilised
and to take service, are very sensitive concerning
their dignity, and omit no opportunity of asserting
their claims as the first lords of the soil.
One of the illustrations of this weakness
represents a hideous-looking native, clad in tattered
European clothing, and with no shoes on his
feet, but carrying himself with a jaunty air, and
smoking a clay pipe with great complacency.
An English servant-girl, standing before the
door of a house, is offering him a pair of boots,
of the description named after Marshal Blucher.
The "noble savage," however, rejects them with
disdain.

'' Nah, me want Wellingtons. If me wear
Bluchers folk take me for new chum."

In another cut, a country storekeeper addresses
a native waggon-driver, who seems more
occupied with his own importance than in attending
to his oxen:

"COUNTRY STOREMAN.—Here, Johnny, take
box along a station—savey?"

[It appears, by the way, to be the custom for
all Britons to speak to aborigines after the
ingenious manner in which nurses speak to
babies.]

"COLOURED PARTY (irately}.—Savey! Go
blazes, savey—take me for Chinaman?"

The proceedings of the Acclimatisation Society
form a standing joke with our colonial contemporary.
But in the comedy extracted from this
subject we fail to see quite so much brilliancy as
is occasionally bestowed upon others; and the
hits are generally too esoteric to bear reproduction.

It may be supposed that the heathen mythology
is not very familiar to the lower class of settlers
in Australia. It is not surprising, therefore, to
hear of a stable-boy (aged about thirty)
discoursing in this manner to a friend at the
sculpture-gallery of the Melbourne Public
Library:

"STABLE-BOY.—They don't give ye the weights
and colours, but they gives ye their names. That's
Wenus [pointing to a copy of the Venus of Canova],
named arter a very plain mare as belonged to Sir
Joseph; she was the dam of Haffrodighty.
Yonder's Aristides, named arter a wichious hoss
as belonged to Lord Eglinton; and there's
Hercules, named arter Sir Hercules, who weren't
no great performer hisself, but he got good
stock."

The same misapprehension may, however, exist
among the same classes in England; for a
professional knowledge of horses somehow seems
to preclude the remotest knowledge of everything
else. The "sporting world" is the most
isolated of all the other "worlds" into which
society is divided; and we have heard of one of
its most enthusiastic members who makes it a
rule to name his children after the respective
winners of the Derby in the years when they are
born. As the family run is on girls, the effect is
slightly whimsical; and the young ladies as they
grow up will not, perhaps, be greatly charmed to
find themselves called West Australian,
Caractacus, and Macaroni;—the latter, by the way,
having had a narrow escape of Lord Clifden.
And as they will have no chance of changing
their Christian names upon an interesting
occasion, the infliction must be doubly distressing.

Public men in Australia appear sometimes, in
the language of schoolmistresses, to "forget
themselves," and to provoke that withering
popular sarcasm, "Do you call yourself a gentleman?"
We gather from some verses in the
Melbourne Punch that two barristers, who were
engaged on different sides in a police case,
recently came to words, and to something more
too, in a rather remarkable manner. Barrister
number one, it seems, described the prisoner,
who was the bone of contention between them,
as having been intoxicated on the occasion
which gave rise to the proceedings. Barrister
number two denied the assertion; upon which
Barrister number one expressed his opinion that
Barrister number two was not himself in a state