so on.'" The willingness to emigrate, and
readiness to work, with good characters,
the only true test. The result has been a
great deal of detached Government emigration
of people who left no familiar ties behind.

The gold discoveries have brought into
painful relief all the dangerous defects of the
emigration system, which has so long been in
favour with the selfish and short-sighted part
of the pastoral proprietors. In the face of
the greatest possible demand for labour in
Australia, the working classes of this country
show no inclination to avail themselves of the
free passages offered by Government. In the
mean time, the bachelor vagabond shepherds
are leaving masters, to whom they are attached
neither by duty nor by interest; they are
shepherds who have no wives, no cottages nor
gardens, no heifers, to detain them in service.
The sheep wander into the wilderness; tens of
thousands are being destroyed for want of
care. In vain gentlemen and their sons, even
young children, set to work to protect some
portion of the flocks; before this time next
year, perhaps, millions will have perished, or
will have become permanently deteriorated.
The exports for 1850 were little short of three
millions and a half. Nine-tenths of this was
wool and copper, all needed in British
manufactures. All the superiority of our woollen
trade, from carpets to shawls, now rests upon
the price and quality of Australian wool.
Every shepherd gone a-gold-digging in
Australia will lower the wages of some woollen-
weaver, or worker, in Yorkshire, Gloucestershire,
or Worcestershire. It will take years to
repair the consequences of past neglect. Good
masters in Australia now rejoice to see their
shepherds remaining at their posts; or, at
any rate, their shepherds' children take their
fathers' places.

The gold discoveries will revolutionise
Australia. They will people it, and make it great
and powerful. But, in the mean time, there is
misery and ruin in store for thousands
dependent on exports and imports of more than
three millions sterling value, between England
and Australia, endangered by a discovery
which draws, irresistibly, to certain spots, the
large loose army of wandering shepherds,
whom the Government and employers have
done their utmost to recruit and cultivate.
They cry, now, for the " feeble," " the old,"
the "fathers of long families." They wish
they had encouraged small farms, and
supported the only remedy for the Curse of 'Gold—
FAMILY COLONISATION.

THE PEDIGEEE OF PUPPETS.

PUPPETS are as old as deceit—a vice which
dates from Eve and the serpent. They existed
in all ages, and amongst every kind of people,
civilised and half-civilised; but it would be
tedious to dive into antiquity, and to fish up
all that Herodotus has told us of the puppet-
shows of Egypt, or to enumerate what
Lucian, or some one in his name, has said of
the Syrian mannikins; what, Aristotle or
Pindar have alluded to amongst the Greeks;
or what Cicero, Ovid, and Livy have
described, in speaking of the juggleries of the
priesthood of old Rome. The gods of Greece
were puppets, and their priests pulled the
strings. Even when Christianity began to
flourish, its doctrines were sought to be
inculcated through the senses of the
ignorant—and chiefly by cheating them. Images
of saints—most frequently the image of
the Virgin Mary—were so numerous, that
the Romish Church became, especially in Italy
and Spain, one large establishment of puppets.
Religion, argued the monks of the dark ages,
must be symbolised; and the Church of
Rome has never wholly departed from the
principle. Indeed, it is from the effigies of
the Madonna, or Virgin, that the term
Marionnettes is derived. According to Ducange,
the monkish Latin word for the puppet
representative of the Virgin was "Mariola",
which has been fused, with Madonna, into
Marionnette.

Wooden saints were, in the middle ages,
very much alive to all the interests of the
good monks, their followers. They bent their
heads, stretched out their hands, and winked
their eyes at their worshippers, (they have
winked a modern wink or two, by the way)
whenever bowing, begging, or winking, was
profitable. They even walked out of their
niches,—a feat at which the celebrated Voto
Santo of Lucca was a great adept. As the
public of every age have been always prone to
believe " what they see with their own eyes",
it is by no means astonishing to find that the
miracles of this peripatetic puppet have been
strongly attested.

Puppets in that day played the most
prominent parts in processions. Perhaps the
most renowned procession in history was
that which took place at the feast of the
Virgin, in Venice. This was a festival in
memory of twelve brides, who were, once
upon a time, carried off by certain pirates
of Trieste. The most attractive feature of
the procession consisted of a dozen of the
prettiest girls in Venice, who were fashionably
dressed, and were loaded with jewellery, real
or mosaic; according to the state of the public
exchequer. To centre upon these beauties as
much interest as possible, they were afterwards
comfortably married at the public cost.
The financial reformers of Venice, however,
eventually curtailed these sentimental splendours,
and limited the number of brides to
three. In the course of years, more stringent
economy saved the dresses, jewels, and dowers
of even three to the state: live Marys were
put down altogether, and puppets substituted.
Public wit then effaced whatever trace of
chivalry remained in the procession, by extending
the term for these timber virgins, "Wooden
Marias," (Marie di Legno) , as a nickname to all
hard-featured and clumsy women. But, however