father could have seen the comforts I now
enjoy."

The young people, seeing the turn matters
were taking, scampered off with glowing
cheeks.

"We have four farms I can say master to,"
pursued the father, " and eight hundred sheep,
and six hundred head of cattle, forty pigs, and
a bit of money in the bank, too, that the
youngsters don't know of. Well, all the lad
will want is a good wife. Let me see,–––I 'll be
in Sydney next Monday five weeks,–––I must
buy them a few things, a chest of drawers,–––
yes, they 'd be handy; and I might as well
buy one for Jane, poor girl. Like to deal out
to all alike; and the wife wants one. I only
thought of taking the cart, but I will want a
dray, and eight good bullocks, besides,—that's
easy enough to be seen. Well, well; it's a
nice snug home––one hundred and four acres,
––two acres laid out for a vineyard,—forty
under crop,––handy for the station, too."
Thus the good man musingly spoke, partly to
himself, and partly addressing his wife, who,
with a cheerful and approving look, nodded
consent.

HOMELY HINTS TO MARRIED STATESMEN.

At this little homestead there were five
men, whose savings would have enabled them
to have taken farms, if they could have met
with suitable girls as wives; and they pretty
plainly animadverted upon the policy of those
whom they considered the proper persons to
have rectified their grievances. One remarked,
"What does Lord Stanley care, so that he has
a wife himself!"

"Ah! " responded another; " and Peel,
with all his great speeches, never said a single
word about wives for us."

"Lord John Russell, too," said Tom Slaney,
"seems just as bad as the rest." What does
he think we 're made of? wood, or stone, or
dried biscuit?"

"It ought to be properly represented to
Earl Grey," observed the fourth. " Do they
call this looking after a young colony? Has
nobody no sense?"

"Yes," replied the most sensitive of the
party, " the Queen ought to know it, it is a
cruel shame."

A COTTAGE, ROMANTIC AND REAL.

John Whitney had now made his hut a
comfortable cottage. In the centre of the
room stood a neat table, shelves were arranged
over a bush-dresser, and at one corner of the
room could be seen a neat little plate-rack.
A young carpenter in' Australia cannot make
these things without thinking of matrimony;
and the one in Whitney's cottage was
beautifully made, evidently intended as a bridal
gift. At the opening of the small window
was a neat box of mignonette; whilst a foot-
stool, a salt-box, a board, a roll ing-pin, afforded
sufficient evidence that a wife was all that
was wanted to make this abode a happy home.

Nor did the exterior lack any of those
embellishments that are required to invest a
cottage with those charms which the hand of
nature alone can fully set forth. The tasteful
mind and apt hand of Whitney mingled art
and nature so well that the first could hardly
be distinguished by the luxuriance of the
latter, The workman laid first the train, and
then allured nature in a manner to follow and
adorn his handy-work. He first erected an
open verandah of posts, saplings, and laths
along the whole front of his cottage, leaving
three or four door- ways, or spacious apertures
for entrance. Against these posts he planted
rose-trees, which in Australia grow to an
extraordinary height; and around them he
carefully trained beautiful creepers, passion-
flower, and other wild plants of the Bush, so
that in the course of a short time the framework
became almost invisible. The posts
seemed to have grown into pillars of rose-
bush, thickly entwined with flowery creepers,
threading their way the whole length and
height of the verandah, and here and there
forming the most fanciful festoons over the
door-way, or round the tiny windows, thus
throwing a coolness and a freshness of shade
into the inmost recesses of the little cottage.
There also might be observed two or three
well-trained vines intermixed with all, which
produced the most tempting clusters of grapes,
as they could be seen to hang through the open
lattice of the verandah; while, all over the
roof of the house grew fine water-melons, the
strong stems of which closely encircled the
chimney.

It was truly delightful to view this sylvan
cottage in the calm and balmy coolness of a
dewy morning, and to behold this structure,
as it were, of rose-trees and creepers, as the
warmth of the morning sun opened those
closed flowers that seem thus to take their
rest for the night, and the fresh-blown rose-
buds that were hardly to be seen the evening
before; most of those could now be observed
to be tenanted by that busy little creature,
the bee, sent "as a colonist," from England to
Australia, humming, in all the active vivacity
of its nature, a joyful morning carol to the
God of Nature. Indeed, were it not that
there were appearances of some more
substanstial domestic comforts to be seen in the
background such as rows of beans, sweet peas,
beds of cabbages, &c., set in the garden, and
some young fruit-trees; while near a shady
corner might be noticed young ducks feeding
under a coop, and "little roasters" gambolling
outside the pig-stye, which by the way was
deeply shaded by large bushy rose-trees, this
cottage at a distance might have been
mistaken for a green-house. We ought not to
omit that a number of fowls could be observed
quietly roosting in some trees at the end of
one of the outer buildings.

Truly, it was a little fairy home, with no
rent, no taxes, no rates, to disturb the peace
of the occupier; and no one, who has not