The topping citizens of Sydney very much
resemble the same gentlemen in
Manchester; they are so busy making money,
that unless you have a large letter of credit
they have not time to be hospitable to you;
in fact, they can't afford it. The writers of
my letters had led me to expect a very
different reception.

At the period I speak ofit was before the
great crash of 1843—the streets of Sydney
were particularly brilliant; landaus, gigs,
phaetons, curricles, and even four-in-hands
swarmed, as well as all kinds of quiet
carriages, and ladies and gentlemen on horseback;
and then, as now, there were great numbers of
both sexes who delighted to adorn themselves
after the exact pattern of the book of fashions;
the Government clerks and the sons of wealthy
Emancipists were particularly brilliant. Amid
all this glare and glitter, it is impossible to
describe how lonely, how miserable I felt; ten
thousand times more lonely than if in a desert,
for trees are to a solitary man more soothing
objects than plate glass, and cattle feeding
more companionable than busy stranger
crowds. However, among all my letters, I
found two useful, and several very civil. But
it was astonishing how every one had
something to sell me, an extraordinary bargain.
One had a farm; another, a lot of sheep; and
a third, a famous mob of cattle; and all were
ready to take part cash and part on my bill at
a long date. Having firmly made up my mind
to buy nothing, there was no harm done; but
it was amusing to find, by comparing notes,
that the farm had no water, the sheep had the
scab, and the cattle were so wild that they
had not been mustered within the memory of
man. Even the official and Government clerks
cannot refrain from doing a bit of trading.
These gentlemen fancy they fill the place of
an aristocracy, their moustachios, tips, and
patent boots, their airs and graces, would do
credit to Downing-street or Somerset House.
Each carries, I heard a Bushman once observe,
a ramrod in his spine, and an eye-glass in his
eye, and the sons of radical coal-merchants,
transplanted to a foreign climate, become the
heroes of silver-fork novels; but still the
influence of the place sets them to make money
as well as debts, and all my well-dressed
acquaintances had something to sell me—a
gun, a saddle, a fishing rod of wonderful and
totally useless perfection. When they found
I would not bite, their eyesight failed
them.

Sometimes I joined pic-nic parties to the
oyster-beds, which lie about four miles out in
the bay; sometimes I rode and drove with
new made friends in the Government domain,
a splendid park, extending to the water's edge,
laid out in gardens of European and Tropical
flowers and shrubs, with a drive for carriages,
which is always crowded in an evening. There
used to appear an Emancipist auctioneer, whose
life and death was a romance, in a low open
phaeton, drawn by four splendid ponies, ridden
by postilions in livery; himself grandly
leaning on a gold headed cane. There too,
an old man, of Holywell-street origin, who
could r.either read nor write, dashed along in
a perfectly appointed tandem, with a lovely
girl beside him. He was reputed worth a
hundred thousand pounds. And others of all
ranks, in scores, displaying luxury without
refinement; of whom, now there are few left.
There is a bathing establishment, in a retired
part of the Promontory on which the park is
formed, and from the heights the fair Australians
may often be seen, in becoming costumes,
stretching across the waters of the bay with
all the agility of mermaids.

A strong contrast to the belles and beaus
of the park, was the widow of Sam Terry,
the convict, who died worth a million sterling;
she was pointed out to me scrubbing her own
door step one morning, in a woollen gown and
shabby black silk bonnet. On another occasion,
I saw Greenacre's friend, Sarah Gale,
very calmly engaged in cutting up boiled beef
in a cook-shop she had established.

Altogether Sydney would be a delightful
place if the men in trade could be inoculated
with a few honourable principles, and the men
of leisure and wealth with a love of refined
and literary occupations; if there were a
greater demand for works of history, philosophy,
and poetry, for pictures and engravings,
and less for port wine and French brandy. It
is not in Colonial towns the emigrant will find
peace, happiness, innocence, or contentment.

CROTCHETS OF A PLAYGOER.

TURNING over, the other day, some old
dramatic journals and magazines, we met
with a curious speculation touching the best
means of indicating the merits of stage-
professors. The method proposed was purely of
a commercial character—it was, indeed,
simply to adapt the language of the Stock-
Exchange to the exigencies of theatrical
adventure. The indefinite terms used in
newspaper reports, it was urged, are unsatisfactory;
but the technics of Lloyds, it was suggested,
would be more eligible as more decided. The
"satirical rogues" insisted that by their
adoption dramatic criticism might be rendered
indubitably explicit and intelligible. The
information given would be most precise. Who
would think of saying, at Lloyd's, that
Omnium had risen considerably in the course of
the day? Not the most incorrigible blockhead.
He would state distinctly that it left
off at seven and three quarters, or some other
figure. The merits of plays and players, the
wag thought, might be similarly described.
We might say of Buskin that he began at
fifty-eight three quarters, progressed to sixty-
five and a half, and has again declined full
eight per cent. Mr. Sock might be quoted
at seventy; Mr. Float at sixty-seven and a
quarter; Mr. Tag at sixty-one.