that we have seen in England. There is the
same style of houses and shops, and plate-glass
fronts. On all sides you see a bustling throng
of merchants, tradesmen, clerks, porters, sea-
captains, operatives, farmers, and long-bearded
squatters in tweeds. Men of business on
horseback, and in every kind of carriage,
from the most stylish phaeton, to the rustiest
of primeval gigs, pour from the picturesque
suburbs into town after breakfast. Drays
pass to and fro with all sorts of merchandise
from ships. Other drays, in the wool season,
are bringing in their bales of wool, for shipment
to London. Omnibuses rattle by. Rows
of handsome hackney carriages—once private,
but which insolvency of former owners has
placed at the disposal of the public—occupy
their respective stands; their drivers evincing
the same taste for extortion as their English
brethren. The butcher's boy calls for orders;
the baker, enthroned on his cart, dispenses his
bread with English punctuality. The
"vegetable man" takes his rounds with his pony
cart (donkeys being almost unknown), and
cries carrots and turnips as excruciatingly
as in the old world. Fishmongers' shops there
are none; supplies in this line being brought
to the doors by men with barrows. One of
these dealers well stocked with bream,
snapper, whiting, flathead, &c., you may
occasionally see (as you pass along the street,)
chaffering with servant girls at the door-steps;
and, upon the conclusion of the bargain, set
about bleeding a lobster, as large—without
any exaggeration—as a new-born baby.

In the after-part of the day, the town, of
course, undergoes a change in the appearance
of the wayfarers. Here, again, we tread
closely upon the heels of the Londoners.
Ladies in a colony by no means lose their
taste for shopping. From three to five
o'clock, you may see plenty of neat boots and
sandalled insteps twinkling across the pavement,
every few yards, between shops and
carriages, and carriages and shops; and that
abominable speech, "What is the next article,
madam?" punishes husbands equally on both
sides of the world. Gay officers, charming
fellows, scatter fascination as they lounge
along. In the evening you may go to the
theatre and hear an opera—"Fra Diavolo,"
"Maritana," or the "Bohemian Girl"—
performed as well as in any provincial theatre of
the mother country. The Jews and the
operatives, with a sprinkling of other classes,
are the steadiest supporters of the drama. The
aristocracy—don't smile! "We have an
aristocracy; how could Englishmen get on without
one!—the aristocracy eschew the drama as
vulgar, except when the Governor goes.

At midnight you leave the theatre. If
intent upon devilled kidneys, native oysters,
or any other established form of post-
theatrical supper, you can be accommodated
at a variety of good taverns, and at moderate
rates. If you are a sensible man, you wend
your way homewards, astonished, perhaps, to
find that this great felonious city of the South
(as depicted by the Earl of Shaftesbury) is
actually as quiet as a Scotch town in church
time. And yet, lighted by gas as you go, you
are walking on ground which, little more
than sixty years ago, was a mere bush—
nursery of kangaroos and opossums.

From this city, after the discovery of
California, until within the last few months,
people of the middle and working classes
poured by thousands into the great American
Dorado. And although our population
—that is to say, the population of the town
alone—had attained, before this curious
migration commenced, to something near sixty
thousand souls; and although George Street,
Sydney, was nearly as long as Oxford
Street, London; the colonists generally began
to have serious fears about so heavy a drain
upon a country, which, at the best of times,
is but ill-supplied with labour. In due time,
however, news arrived of Californian fever,
Californian ague, Californian revolvering, and
Californian potatoes at tenpence a pound;
all which items of intelligence coming
together, naturally abated the fever for
moving. Again, however, it broke out, about
twelve months ago; and, ship-load after
ship-load of human beings, many of them
far from poor, left Port Jackson for San
Francisco—a two months' voyage. Now, New
South Wales has opened a Dorado of her
own, and the hungerers for wealth are
running back from California to their old colony.

My own "diggins" were in the Supreme
Court. I had therefore, for some years, little
travel in this interesting country, other than
such as an attendance on the circuits
imposed. These circuits are held twice a year;
at Maitland, Goulburn, Moreton Bay, and
Bathurst, the new gold field. One trip to
Maitland will put you fully in possession of
the travelling means and appliances, and the
common life, of the colony at large.

My first Maitland trip was made under
auspices very favourable to my acquiring
knowledge of the state of the country. A
fellow-counsel had invited myself, my wife, and
child, to spend a few days with him at his
place on the Hunter, on our way to the assize
town, and we all started together.

By train? No; towards that sort of thing
we only turned the first turf a few months
ago; and if you had only heard all the fine
things said on that occasion, you would have
been astonished at the modesty of Britons.
At ten o'clock, P. M., the two counsel, each
with a wife and child, left their houses for
the Hunter River Steam Navigation
Company's wharf, situate on that branch of the
magnificent Port Jackson, called Darling
Harbour.

Coaches, cabs, drays, trucks, and highly-
excited porters were making an astounding din.
The storm of goods, packages, and parcels of
all kinds for the Hunter—Sydney being the
heart through which all manufactured