Chapter XXIV: Act V (4)

I even enjoyed the privilege—of which I desire to speak reverently and gratefully—of visiting the dear old land, whence came the ancestors of all Australians, the land of the real, veritable 'old masters,' before any like-seeming but disappointing 'Cape' copies of the glorious originals were thought of. I enjoyed thus certain opportunities, of which I did not fail to make reasonable use.

I mention personal facts merely to show that, having early in life apprehended the magnitude of the question, I set myself, not without certain facilities for generalisation, or reasonable time devoted to the inquiry (about fifty years—ah me!), to do battle with the error, now as then, possessing vitality and power of propagation.

The first primary fact which appealed to my reasoning powers as subversive of the 'Cape' or degeneration doctrine was that of the high and increasing value of the fleece of the Australian merino sheep. This astonishing animal, bred from individuals of selected _cabanas_ of the highest Spanish lineage, was landed in New South Wales in the early years of settlement, and tenderly cherished by the Macarthurs, Rileys, Coxes, and other leading colonists, more enthusiastic for the welfare of the land than their own aggrandisement. Kept free from 'improvement'(?) by heterogeneous imported blood, it was actually declared by Shaw of Victoria and other clear-visioned pastoral prophets to be equal, nay _superior_, to the best imported sheep. It was contended for him that the calumniated climate and pastures of Australia had in the acclimatised merino produced a fleece delicately soft, free, lustrous; withal, so highly adapted for the finer fabrics that nothing European could compare with it. That from the type, now securely fixed, and capable of reproducing itself illimitably, had been evolved the most valuable fleece-producing animal, reared in the open air and under natural conditions, _in the whole world_. That so far from the infusion of the best Spanish and Gascon blood improving the Camden merino, as it commenced to be called, marked deterioration followed. Horror of horrors! _imported blood_ injurious—what heresy was this? Yet, incontestably, the prices of the Havilah, Mount Hope, Larra, and Ercildoune clips would seem to have triumphantly established Mr. Shaw's daring proposition.

As to horses, slowly and yet surely it began to be asserted, if not believed, that any stud-master in possession of a family of Australian thoroughbreds, originally imported and bred uncrossed for generations beneath the bright Australian sky, reared on the crisp Australian pastures, had probably better pause before he introduced English blood, _unless he knew_ it to be absolutely superior and likely to assimilate successfully. Later on men were found to say that, given pure pedigree, speed, and soundness on the part of sire and dam, Australian blood-horses, though reared for generations under the _fibre-relaxing climatic influences_ of the Great South Land, were as grandly grown, as speedy, as sound in wind and limb, as full of vigour and vitality, as any of the 'terribly high-bred cattle' which at Newmarket represent the _ne plus ultra_ of equine perfection.

To this latter-day heresy, speculations as to what might have come to the reputation of the race-courses of the land if evil hap had chanced to the son of Cap-à-pie and Paraguay, lent considerable force.

Gradually, also, uprose a bucolic, protesting party, who denied that the unqualified supremacy of the British-bred shorthorn was to last for all time. Second Hubback cows and bulls of the blood of Belvidere and Mussulman, Favourite and Comet, had landed here before the rival names of Bates and Booth were household words, from the Hawkesbury to the Sylvester. Careful breeders, enthusiasts for pedigree, had jealously kept the blood pure. Size and beauty, hair, colour and handling, constitution and flesh-amassing power were equalled or even exceeded in their descendants. Though sorely trammelled by the 'Cape' orthodoxy, these even at length ventured to raise their flag and proclaim a revolutionary epic of fullest colonial brotherhood, other things being equal. Following them came the champions of Devon and Hereford cattle. Lastly, the Suez mail brought news that certain Bates' Duchesses, born and bred in America, in the United States, where the 'Cape' theory as regarding man and beast to this day doth flourish luxuriantly, were re-exported and sold in England for dream-prices before an idolatrous audience. 'So mote it be,' argued the bolder reasoner—'even yet in Australia preserve we but our pure tribes inviolate!'

It irks one to recall how rigidly comprehensive was the elastic network of the 'Cape' theory. By no means would the bulldog fight, nor die in battle the close-trimmed cock, nor sing the bird, nor flower perfume the breeze in Australia, as did their prototypes in 'Merrie England.' Long years since this prejudicial indictment has been laid to rest amid the limbo of forgotten absurdities. Man, the most highly-organised animal, suffered of course the most injurious disparagement; he has but slowly been able to clear himself from these damaging aspersions.

Yet, methinks, old Time, his 'whirligigs and revenges,' is even now uplifting the personal character of the Southern Briton, no longer forced to resent the damaging accusation. In the lower forms of the great School of Effort our champions have arisen and done battle with many a dux of the Old World. They have abundantly demonstrated that they could 'make the pace' and yet exhibit the 'staying power,' which is the great heritage of the breed. Lofty of stature and lithe of limb as they may be—though all are not so—they have shown that they inherited the stark sinews, the unyielding muscles, the indomitable, dogged energy of those 'terrible beef-fed islanders' from whom we are all descended. In the boat, on the cricket-field, at the rifle-targets, and in the saddle, the Australian has shown that he can hold his own with his European relatives.

It remains to be seen whether in the more æsthetic departments he has exhibited the same power of competing on equal terms with his Northern kinsmen. I now venture to assert, considering the limited number of families relatively from which choice could be made, that a very large proportion of Australian-born persons, of both sexes, have exhibited a high degree of talent, and, in some cases, unquestioned genius in the literary, forensic, or scientific arena. That small and distant English-speaking population, which in a single generation produced such men as Wentworth, Robertson, Martin, Dalley, Stephen, Forster, Halloran, Deniehy, Kendall, and Harper—Australians by birth or rearing—may fairly lay claim to the highest intellectual proclivities, to a moral atmosphere favourable to mental development. It is inexpedient to mention names in a limited community, but I may assert, without laying myself open to that accusation of boasting for which a colonial synonym has been adopted, that in the learned professions Australians may be found, if not at the acknowledged pinnacle, so near as to be worthily striving for pre-eminence. Among the fair daughters of the land we know that there are numbered singers, painters, musicians, histrionic artists, and writers, of an eminence which fits them worthily to compete with European celebrities.

Pledged to observing, with deep interest, the native Australian type, so far as it has been presented to me, I have rarely missed an opportunity of testing not only the general characteristics of the individuals examined,—I have even pushed my inquiries almost to the verge of rudeness as to the nationality of parents and grandparents; from the Parramatta River to the Clarence, from the Moyne to the Murrumbidgee, from the Yarra to the Mataura, I have noticed 'natives' of all ranks, ages, and sexes. The eager ethnological reader will naturally require my conclusive opinion—a prosaic, possibly a disappointing one. Australian-born persons, with trifling exceptions, are very like everybody else, born of British blood, anywhere. So far from all being run into one mould, as it pleases strangers to believe, they present as many instances of individual divergence from the ordinary Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic types—mentally and physically—as are to be found in Europe or elsewhere. Then the heat, the constant eating of meat, the locomotive, speculative habit of the land—do these not produce a variation of type? How _can_ they be like people born in the green Motherland? is eagerly asked. My answer is—that 'race is everything.' A little heat more or less, a little extra wayfaring, the prevalence of the orange and banana, of abundant food—these things do not suffice to relax the fibre and lower the stamina of the bold sea-roving breed which has never counted the cost of the deadliest climate or the wildest sea where honour was to be satisfied, thirst for adventure to be slaked, or even that lower but essential desideratum, a full purse to be secured. If the air be hot, there sighs the ocean breeze to temper it withal. On the great interior plateaux, the pure, dry atmosphere, which invigorates the invalid, rears up uninjured the hardy broods of the farmer, the stock-rider, and the shepherd. Stalwart men and wholesome, stirring lasses do they make. The profusely-used beef and mutton diet, due to our countless flocks and herds, though it does not tend to produce grossness of habit, is a muscle-producing food, best fitted for those who are compelled to travel far and fast. The ordinary bush-labourer, reared on a farm or a station, is generally a tall, rather graceful personage. He may be comparatively slight-looking, but if you test or measure him, you will find that the spareness is more apparent than real. His limbs are muscular and sinewy; his chest is broad; his shoulders well spread; he is extremely active, and, either on foot or horseback, can hold his own with any nationality. Wiry and athletic, he is much stronger than he looks. He will generally do manual labour after a fashion and at a pace that would astonish a Kent or Sussex yokel. If he have not the abnormally broad frame of the English navvy or farm-labourer, neither has he the bowed frame, the bent back, the shorter limbs of the European hind. With all his faults he is much more as Nature made him, unwarped by ceaseless compulsory labour, and more capable of the rational enjoyment of life.

With regard to mental characteristics. It has been the fashion to assert that a certain want of thoroughness is observable in the native Australian youths. 'They will not fag at their books to the same extent as a Britisher. They are superficial, light-minded, unstable, what not.'

I well believe this to be an unfounded charge. When will people cease to talk of 'Australians' doing this and that, or permit colonists to differ among themselves from birth, as elsewhere? Here, under the Southern Cross as under Ursa Major, are born the imaginative and the practical, the energetic, the dreamy, the slow and the brilliant, the cautious and the rash, the persevering and the fickle. As the inscrutable human unit enters the world, so must he or she remain, I hold, but partially modified by human agency, until the day of death. Change of abode or circumstance will not perceptibly alter the mysteriously-persistent entity. The eager British or other critic sums up the inhabitants living in five hundred different ways as typical colonists. 'The Australian' (saith he) 'does this, or looks like that, dislikes formality, or abhors uniformity. He is quick, but not persevering; he is not so profound, so long enduring, so "thorough" as the Englishman.' Such reasoners surely assume that all Australians 'to the manner born' were hewn out of one primeval eucalyptus log, instead of, as I had the honour to remark before, possessing in full abundance the endless differentiations and divergences from the parent type, and from each other, so noticeable in Great Britain.

Know, O friendly generaliser, that there be tall Australians and short Australians, lean Australians, and those to whom the increase of adipose tissue is a sore trial. There be fair-haired and dark-haired, brown-and auburn-haired youths and maidens, and ever, as the outward man or woman ripens diverse under the same sun, do the invisible forces of the mind wax faint or fierce, feeble-clinging or deathless-strong. There are speculative, rash Australians; also cautious, _very wary_ Australians. Some to whom gold is but dross, peculiarly difficult to 'pocket' in life's billiard-table, and woefully given to the losing hazard; others to whom pence and half-pence are dear as the rarest coins of the collector, prone to fight for or hoard them with desperate tenacity. 'Natives' who are ready to accept the gravest charge without a grain of self-distrust; 'natives' to whom responsibility is a misery and a burden. Some there are who from childhood to old age scarcely glance at any literary product except a newspaper. Born on the same stream, or tending the same herds, shall be those whose every waking thought is more or less connected with books; to whom the unvisited regions of the Old World, through such glorious guides, are rendered common and familiar. There is _no_ generic native Australian definition, such as we carelessly apply to Englishmen, Americans, Frenchmen, or Germans, when we call the first practical, the second 'go-ahead,' the third gay, the fourth solid. The Australian, perhaps, more nearly resembles the Briton, from whom he has chiefly sprung, than any other sub-variety of mankind.

There may be a slight but noticeable tendency to variation, but it smacks of progressive development rather than of retrogression. Let it be remembered that the inhabitants of the principal subdivisions of Britain have mingled and intermarried in Australia to a greater degree than is possible in the mother-country. Doubtless English and Scotch, Scotch and Irish, and so on, continuously form alliances in Britain; but there scarcely can have been such a thorough sifting up together, such intermixture of blood there, as where the three divisions, having been imported in rateably even quantities, have intermarried, for nearly a century. The thorough welding of Celt and Saxon, Dane and Norseman, Ancient Briton, Scoto-Celt, and Hiberno-Saxon strains, is hardly possible except in a colony. Hence Australia may eventually produce a type of the highest physical and mental vigour possible to the race. It has been conceded that borderers—presumably mixed—have always excelled in stature and mental calibre the pure races. As much may be asserted in days to come of Australians. As it is, instances are not wanting of a type of manhood combining harmoniously those qualities of which English, Irish, and Scotch have from time immemorial been accustomed to boast.

I conclude this outline of a deeply-important question by recording my deliberate conviction, that in the essentials of character, the Southern British race truly resembles and in none falls short of the parent stock. Apparent physical peculiarities may be explained, as the results of a higher average standard of living, a less stationary habit, and the unshared freshness of a glorious atmosphere.

The Great South Land, in extent and variety of climate and soil, offers a more fruitful field for the development of the root-qualities of the race than did any former abiding-place of the great Aryan stock. And though the average stature be exceeded, and the rugged lineaments, no longer ocean-striving, but fanned by softer airs, approximate more closely to the chiselled features of the Greek, ever and for ever more will Australia 'keep unchanged the strong heart of her sons'; for ages yet to come jealously claiming the proud title of 'Britons of the South,' and as such, when the world's war-dogs bay around the sacred standard of the Empire, eagerly emulous to be enrolled among the 'Soldiers of the Queen.'

MY SCHOOL DAYS

It savours of the improbable to assert that the life-careers of my school-comrades have proved to be mainly in development of their boyish traits of character; yet in the majority of instances such has been the case.

Sir James Martin, late Chief Justice of New South Wales, was always _facile princeps_ among us—in every class, in every subject. He may not have posed as a too industrious worker, but, whatever his method, he mastered every department of knowledge which he essayed with unvarying success. That he, in common with most of the 'old boys,' wrote with ease and effectiveness was due, perhaps, to the care bestowed upon the study of English composition. It was a speciality of the school. Hugh Ranclaud once produced an essay so polished and scholarly that suspicion of plagiarism was aroused. A subject was given to him, 'Marauders by land or sea,' to work out under supervision. He emerged triumphantly from the ordeal. The first numbers of _Pickwick_ appearing about that time, in green covers, if I mistake not, Martin commenced a tale, embodying a similar style of incident. I forget the title now, but some numbers were printed. It was a boy's audacious imitation, but even at this distance of time I recall the undoubted ability of his performance. Part of the action was laid in London, a city, strangely enough (though he knew more of its history and topography than many a dweller within sound of Bow Bells), that he was never destined to behold.

William Forster was much the same kind of boy as he was a man: obstinately honest, uncompromising, detesting the expedient; clever at classics and mathematics, yet with a strong leaning to poetry. He left us to go to the King's School at Parramatta, then in charge of the Rev. Mr. Forrest, Hovenden. Hely, Whistler and Eustace Smith, Moule, the Rossi Brothers, Walter Lamb, and a large contingent of Stephens were contemporaries. Alfred of that ilk and I were great chums. He was a steady worker, as were most of that branch of his family. Consett (Connie) was then a handsome, clever boy, who could learn anything when he liked, but was not over-fond of work. Matthew Henry (now a Supreme Court judge), on the other hand, was an insatiable acquirer of knowledge, and bore off a bagful of prizes, so to speak, at every examination. Frank, his cousin, was not over-eager about draughts from the Pierian spring, which led to misunderstandings between him and our worthy master; but he was famous for tenacity of purpose and indomitable resolution, qualities which served him well in after-life. Among the boys who came comparatively late was George Rowley. He must have been fourteen, at least, and by no means forward. In two years he was not far from the head of the school. The Brennans—John, the late sheriff, and his brother Joseph—David Moore, a Minister of the Crown in Victoria in days to come, David Forbes, the present judge, and George Lord were the Spofforths, Bannermans, and Massies of that long-past day—old fashioned, perhaps, in a cricketing sense, but prophetic of triumphs to come.

There were fights now and then, and 'what for no?' But these necessary conflicts were conducted with all proper decorum at the bottom of the playground. Mr. Cape, very properly, did not discourage them as long as there was no unfairness. I reminded Mr. William Crane, stipendiary magistrate, years since, of an obstinate engagement between us, in which his superior science gained the victory. I 'knocked back' or put out a knuckle of my right hand (as our schoolboy phrase was) in that or some other desperate fray. Dr. Parsons, a medical friend whom I met in the street, reduced the swelling for me. The worthy stipendiary showed a similar displacement, attributable to the same cause, as we compared notes.

Ronald Cameron was one of our leading champions, being ready to fight anything or anybody at short notice. He challenged to the combat Cyrus Doyle, a long-limbed native, big enough to eat him, with the assurance of a gamecock defying an emu. He lost the fight, of course; but no other boy of his size in the school would have thought of commencing it. He had been at sea for a year, and was thereby enabled to tell us wonderful tales of his adventures among the South Sea Islands—much after the fashion of 'Jack Harkaway,' who, however, like gas in the time of Guy Fawkes, 'wasn't then inwented.' In after-years a report was current among us that he was lost at sea. Whether true or not I am unable to say. He certainly was, with the exception of Carden Collins, the most utterly fearless boy I ever saw.

Of course, with so large a school, under masters were required. These gentlemen were excellent teachers and conscientious disciplinarians. First came Mr. Murray, the English and arithmetical master; then Mr. O'Brien, writing master and teacher of mathematics. He had a way of saying, when arrived at the Q.E.D. of a problem in Euclid, 'And the thing is done.' How well I remember his desk and the pen he was always mending! No steel pens in those days. We had to learn to mend our own quill pens and keep them in good order. If the pens were bad and the writing suffered thereby, we suffered in person. This led to the careful preparation of the obsolete goose-quill—now a figure of speech, a thing of the past.

The Rev. Mr. Woolls was for a year or more classical master. He afterwards went to Parramatta and established himself independently. A fair-haired, ruddy-faced, Kingsley-looking young Englishman was he when he first came to Sydney College. He was the ideal tutor, and most popular with us all: strict in school, but full of life and gaiety when lessons were over.

The late Reverend David Boyd, afterwards of East Maitland, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, succeeded him. He was an accomplished person if you like: a first-rate classical scholar, with a fair knowledge of French, German, and Italian—possibly Hebrew, for he knew pretty well everything, from astronomy to single-stick, fencing to comparative philology. He rode, drove, shot, fished, painted, was musical, mathematical—a mesmerist doubtless. 'Omnibus rebus et quibusdem aliis' ought to have been his motto. We boys looked upon him as a successor of the Admirable Crichton, and revered him accordingly. I was very glad when he 'followed the rush' to Port Phillip in 1842, and gave the Hammonds, Howards, myself, and a few other ex-Sydney College boys our last year's teaching. We ought to have made the most of it, for, as none of us got any more, we had to rely upon those early years of conscientious grounding for the foundation of any edifice of learning we should elect to place thereon. It has proved extremely useful to all of us, and it was no one's fault but our own if we did not imbibe every form of useful knowledge short of what university training alone could have supplied.

Besides these gentlemen we had drawing and French masters. Mr. Rodius was a German artist, a painter in watercolours and a limner of likenesses in crayon. Many of the early celebrities will owe whatever immortality they may secure, to his industrious pencil. Still linger in old colonial mansions a few portraits, not obtruded perhaps, but too life-like to be lost sight of, bearing the signature 'C. Rodius.' In our family scrap-album several water-colour sketches are to be seen, showing perhaps more than the portraits—which were necessary 'pot-boilers' in that material age—the true artistic touch. He used to scold us, his pupils, for our indifference and inattention: 'Ven I was yong I did rone a whole mile every day so as to be in dime vor my bainding lezzon; I belief you would all rone a mile do esgabe it.' I don't know that he succeeded in forming artists of that generation, but possibly we may have been rendered more appreciative of the paintings which most of us were to behold in the Galleries of Europe. Mr. Stanley, our French master, knew his Paris intimately, I doubt not. He had the Parisian accent, too, very different in quality from the provincial French which, when spoken fluently, enables so many professors of the language to pass muster. He was a man of distinguished bearing and 'club' form, resembling curiously in appearance, and in some other ways, a late fashionable celebrity. Why he had come to live in a colony and teach French at a boarding-school we might wonder, but had no means of ascertaining. His life, doubtless, contained one of the romances of which Australia was at that time full. He was generous to all his pupils. No unkind word was ever said regarding him. He imparted to us a thorough comprehension of the genius of the language; and if we never fully probed the subtle distinctions of irregular verbs, it was no fault of his. Long afterwards, when at the Grand Hôtel de Louvre, or the 'Trois Frères Provencaux,' I was able to make my wants known, surrounded by British and American capitalists, sitting mute as fishes, I recalled with gratitude Mr. Stanley's faithful monitions.

One of our school games was, of course, that of 'fives.' We played against one of the high gables of the college building, where the ground had been partially levelled; but it was rather rough still. A road-party was doing something to the present College Street when a master suggested that I should ask my friend Mr. Felton Mathew, then Surveyor-General and Chief Road-superintendent, to allow the men to complete our 'fives' court. Mr. Mathew was our neighbour at Enmore; he bought the ground from my father on which he built Penselwood. My request was granted, and a party of men under an overseer soon made another place of it.

A tragical incident connected with the game occurred about this time. Some of the boys were playing in Sydney against a high wall in a court built for the purpose. It was not properly supported, for it fell suddenly, killing poor Billy Jones, who was one of the players. I don't think I remember any other accident. There was an epidemic of influenza, precisely like the 'fog fever' of recent years in symptom, cause, and effect. It was universal, severe, and troublesome, but we all recovered in due time. Even 'fog fever,' therefore, is no new thing. A certain school of weather prophets is convinced that, as they state their proposition, 'the seasons have changed; since the old colonial days they have become drier or cooler, even hotter, sometimes.' After a pretty clear recollection of most of the seasons since the 'three years' drought' of 1836-7-8, I am opposed to that belief. What has been will be again. People were justified in surmising about the time of last autumn that it had forgotten how to rain in New South Wales and part of Queensland. In this year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven that theory may be said to have exploded.

What was a really exceptional, even phenomenal, form of weather, however, did take place in and near Sydney in one of the dry years mentioned, which was a fall of snow. We made snowballs at Enmore and enjoyed the usual schoolboy amusements connected therewith. It must have been nearly as cold a day as last Monday week. There was snow on all the hills around Albury, but I did not hear of any snowballing quite so near Sydney as I refer to. If the Messrs. Chaffey Brothers succeed in their irrigation scheme, and make the Mildura salt-bush wilderness to bloom as the rose, we may attain partial security from droughts at least. Nevertheless let us pray to be delivered from the legendary visitations which grey-headed aboriginals have described to pioneer settlers. Such an one, unbroken for _seven years_, is now laying waste Queensland.

The sons of Sir Thomas Mitchell—Livingstone, Roderick, and Murray—were among the denizens of that old enclosure of learning, where, as Hood so truly sings—

Ay! there's the playground—there's the lime,
Beneath whose shade in summer's prime
So wildly I have read!
Who sits there now and skims the cream
Of young romance and weaves a dream
Of love and cottage bread?

Who, indeed! and how few are left of all that joyous crew that ran and leaped, shouted and whooped with the delight of abounding animal spirits? Besides the Mitchells were the sons of Colonel Snodgrass; the Dowlings, the present worthy judge and his brother Vincent; the Ritchies; the Nortons, James and John; George Wigram Allen; the Mannings, Arthur and Henry. These with others might be considered the aristocratic section, but there were no divisions founded upon social inequalities. We learned and fed, played and lived generally, in generous and hearty fellowship.

William Wentworth the younger, who afterwards distinguished himself at Cambridge, but died early, was intellectually a loss to his native land of no trifling extent.

John Lang, whose name to this day is well remembered in the Madras Presidency, was a Sydney College boy. Known to be clever, no one was surprised to hear that he distinguished himself at Cambridge, and passed as a barrister with credit. He made a short visit to Sydney afterwards, where, politically, he followed the banner of Mr. Wentworth. But he preferred to quit Australia for the exciting life and larger fees with which Indian barristers are credited. There, thanks to an unusual facility for acquiring languages, he acquired legal celebrity and a brilliant forensic reputation. He gained the historic case of Jootie Persaud, a native contractor, against the Government, which involved half a million of money. His fee, it was said, paid by the grateful plaintiff, was the royal one of a _lakh of rupees_ (£10,000). A brilliant companion, a more than popular society man, whose promising career was cut short by an early death, he found time to write several Anglo-Indian and an Australian novelette or two. _Will He Marry Her?_, _The Forger's Wife_, _York; you're wanted_, are still in constant demand, judging from the number of cheap editions issued. But to my mind _Wanderings in India_ is one of the best of the lighter descriptions of Eastern life ever published. The mingled realism and pathos of the style have been rarely excelled.

Our worthy master was fully aware that moral suasion was by no means wholly to be relied upon for the steady stimulation of his troop along the high-road of knowledge. Yet did he make from time to time appeals to the higher nature, attributed to boys in improving works of fiction.

'Bear in mind,' he would say on these occasions, 'that you are to be the future leaders and guides of society in this new country, which is destined to develop into such a great and important one. Out of your ranks, from among those who stand before me in this hall this day, will be chosen the judges, the magistrates of the land, the clergymen, the lawyers, the legislators and civil servants. These high positions and responsible offices must be filled by you, or boys of like age and training, when grown to be men. Should you not, therefore, strive earnestly, resolutely, to fit yourselves to discharge the duties to which in the course of nature you are to be called, intelligently, efficiently, honourably? And is there any probability that such will be the case unless you apply yourselves lovingly, perseveringly, to the tasks set you by me, your teacher and your friend, for which purpose and no other you are placed here by your worthy parents? Master Jones will now commence the Latin lesson of the day—the second ode of Horace, if I mistake not, etc.'

Portions of this wise, thoughtful advice were probably retained mechanically, as an exercise of memory, though not seriously reflected upon. Much passed 'in at one ear and out of the other,' unheeded and soon forgotten, with the incredible heedlessness of early youth. Yet how strangely accurate has been the fulfilment of these long-past warnings. Among us then stood in embryo a Chief Justice, since eminent among high legal authorities, dying in proved possession of a massive intellect, a wide-reaching grasp of principles, a rapid faculty of generalisation which will ever cause his memory to be revered and his decisions to be quoted; three puisne judges, all of whom have earned the respect of men for legal attainment and unswerving impartiality; a Right Honourable Privy Councillor of our Gracious Sovereign, whose Jubilee (now that half a century has rolled by since Hugh Ranclaud and I, arms crony-like about each other's necks, heard the Proclamation of her majority read under the oaks of Macquarie Place) received a world-wide celebration. A Privy Councillor, moreover, whose privilege it was, by one act of statesmanlike inspiration, to nationalise Australia and to immortalise himself.

Alfred Stephen became a clergyman, always a hard-working, conscientious parish priest, beloved by his parishioners. He died in harness. Poor Connie, when I saw him many a year after his schoolboy days, was no longer handsome and careless, but as an eminent solicitor, and thus chained to the Bench, a galley-slave of the law, comparatively war-worn of visage. And pray what are we all in middle life but the bond-slaves, scarcely disguised, of some form of ownership which we dignify with the name of Circumstance? He and his brother Matthew Henry were in the House of Assembly at one time, thus justifying the prophecy as to the school being the nursery of future legislators.

Sir James Martin was Her Majesty's Attorney-General, and afterwards Chief-Justice William Forster was in more than one Ministry. Allan Macpherson was for many years regularly returned to Parliament. Sir George Wigram Allen, the steadiest of workers at school, again kept close to Hood's humorous declaration—

Each little boy at Enfield School
Became an 'Enfield's Speaker.

He, with the Honourable James Norton, his neighbour and class-fellow, but continued unchanged the steadfastness and success of his school record. With one's schoolfellows the physical proportion seems to alter strangely and, in a sense, unnaturally in the aftertime. The big boys, the eldsters of one's early days, when met with in other years, appear unaccountably shrunken; while the 'little boys' of the same period seem to have developed abnormally and assumed the gigantic. For instance, a small orphan creature was brought to the school very young. He seemed unable to face the strangeness of his surroundings. When, years afterwards, I met at the race-ground of another colony an athletic six-foot manager of a cattle-station, mounted on a fiery steed, and by repute the show stock-rider of the district, I could not reconcile it to credibility that he should be the 'Bluey' (such was his sobriquet) of our school days. He was, nevertheless.

The Broughtons of Tumut, Archer and Robert—now no more—were among the elders of the Sydney College. During the last two years I have visited their homes in that romantic corner of New South Wales. All this time I had a curiosity to explore their ancient town of Tumut under the shadow of the Australian Alps, with its rushing river, green valleys, and romantic scenery. I shall always feel thankful that my desire has been gratified.

We were not permitted to go boating in the harbour unless in charge of relatives. And very properly. But we were allowed to bathe in the summer afternoons, after applying for formal leave.

Our greatest treat was, on the Saturday half-holiday, the picnic to Double Bay. We chose this as being a quasi-romantic spot. Some one had commenced a mansion there and had not completed it. There was a deserted vineyard, which looked like an amphitheatre; an artificial fish-pond too—an object of deep interest. In those golden summer eves we gathered bagfuls of the native currant—a small fruit capable of being converted into jam in spite of a startling acidity of flavour—and having eaten our lunch, 'sub Jove,' used to fish, bathe, and scamper about the beach till it was time to return. Still runs the tiny creek into which we used to dash 'like troutlets in a pool'; still ebb and flow the tides of the little bay; but the neighbourhood is crowded with buildings, incongruous to the scene, and the glory of youthful adventure, which then pervaded all things, like the _genius loci_, has, with the long-past years, fled for ever.

SYDNEY FIFTY YEARS AGO

Soon after we went to live at Enmore, I being then nine or ten years old, my first pony was presented to me by my father. A tiny Timor mare was little Bet; Dick Webb, the well-known horse-dealer and livery-stable keeper, being the intermediary. Cargoes of these small Eastern horses, degenerate in size only, from scant feeding and crowded pastures, were then imported from the islands of Timor and Lombok. Disrespectful remarks have been written touching the quality of these early Australian hackneys. They were accused of spoiling the breed of our horses. Spoiling, forsooth! Nothing better ever trod on turf than these miniature Barbs, for such they undoubtedly were. Clean-legged, long-pasterned, bright-eyed, lean-headed, mostly with well-placed shoulders and well-bent hocks, each with pluck enough for a troop of horse—where could one get a better cross than these wonderful little 'tats,' with legs and feet of iron, and though only ranging from ten to twelve hands high, able to carry a heavy man a long day's journey?

The Shetland pony, grand little chap as he may be, is a degenerate cart-horse, nothing more; he can trot, walk, and carry a burly gamekeeper up a steep hillside, but he has no pace. The Timor ponies, on the contrary, with light-weights, could make very fair racing time, were high-couraged and untiring, in or out of condition, bequeathing to their offspring the fire and speed of the Eastern horse, with a quality of legs and feet difficult to find nowadays. My little mare was a trotter, a jumper, a clever all-round hack. A colt of my next Timor mare I used to ride when I was a man grown, nearly twelve stone in weight, the which impost he could carry like a bird, and even bolt with occasionally.

More than one fashionably bred racehorse of the present day has the blood of a Timor ancestress in his veins, and though the fact is not obtruded, doubtless owes the staying power and undeniable legs and feet to that infusion. In those early days whole cargoes of them were brought through the streets of Sydney by the sailors, the manner being thus—half-a-dozen were tied neck to neck with strong short ropes, a halter attached to the one on the near side of the string, the which a couple of stalwart sailors tugged manfully, another encouraging the line from the rear. They were half-covered with hieroglyphs in the shape of brands. Prices ranged from five pounds to ten, according to quality. The sons of well-to-do people were to be seen mounted upon them. When fed and groomed they were as showy and fast hackneys as a light-weight would desire.

While dwelling upon these incidents of an earlier day, the hours and limits of school deserve notice. At the Sydney College we were expected to attend at nine o'clock in the morning. At mid-day an hour's recess was granted. In that interval the boarders dined; the day-scholars having disposed of their lunches hurriedly, went in for as much play as the time would admit. From 1 o'clock till 3 P.M. was occupied by afternoon school; the day-scholars departing then whithersoever they listed. The boarders dispersed to play cricket, went for a walk or into town—after applying for leave in the latter cases. On Saturday we worked from nine till twelve, when the half-holiday set in. There was no whole holiday in my day. And three morning hours, multiplied by the weeks in a year, should account for a fair measure of work.

After the country had become fairly prosperous and it was seen that tens of thousands of men could find work and room for their energy in the virgin waste of the interior, immigration was encouraged by the Government of the day. A bounty was paid to each emigrant or to the agent who recommended or persuaded him to come to the far, unknown land.

It was curious, even then, to find a class which held that they had a vested labour interest in the colony—which disapproved strongly of assisted, unrestricted immigration. They complained that other persons should come out at the expense of the State to compete, as they alleged, with them and lower the price of labour.

'It was the prisoners' colony,' asserted the demagogues who formulated this view. 'Free men had no right to come here, subsisted and helped by the Government.'

Enmore, being about three miles from the Sydney College, was rather far for a daily walk before the advent of little Bet, but with the aid of a drive now and then (of course there were no omnibuses) I managed it pretty well at first. The only house at all near us was tenanted by Mrs. Erskine, with whose sons I used to beguile the tedium of the road. Once we asked a wood-carter for a lift, whom not acceding to our request, we pelted with stones. He complained to the authorities, and we suffered in person accordingly. Then an adventure befell which led to grief and anxiety. It might well have been serious. I had started on the home-track in the afternoon, when one of the tropical storms not unknown in Sydney to this day commenced. The rain came down as if to repeat the deluge, an inch apparently falling every ten minutes. The low lands near the Haymarket were flooded. I was drenched. Streams and torrents coursed down every channel. The drains burst up. Things looked bad for a long walk with creeks to cross. At this juncture a tidy-looking old woman (she sold milk) invited me to enter her dwelling. I did so, and found myself in a neat and cleanly cottage. The rain not abating, she invited me to stay for tea, exhibiting most excellent bread and butter. Finally, discovering that I had so far to go and the waters being still 'out,' she prevailed upon me, nothing loth, to remain all night.

Unluckily, as it turned out, my father was in town, and had called at the school to take me home. He was told that I had left shortly before. Driving rapidly, being eager to overtake me, he reached home to find that I had not turned up. After an anxious interval, during which fears obtruded themselves that I had fallen into a creek or water-hole and so got drowned, he rode back into town, searching vainly of course for my extremely naughty self, then calmly reading by the light of a tallow candle, my aged hostess meanwhile knitting. When he again visited the College on the off-chance of my having concluded to return, and was told to the contrary, he gave me up for lost. Mr. Cape, however, stated his belief that R. B., though of tender years, was a boy exceptionally capable of taking care of himself, and probably would be found even now in a place of safety.

This, however, was accepted by my anxious parent merely as an amiable attempt at consolation, whereupon he rode home again through mud and mire in despairing mood. A restless early riser by habit, he was in the saddle before dawn, with a view to having the creeks and hollows searched, when happening to pass my old woman's cottage, I recognised the horses first (Australian fashion), my stern Governor and the groom next. I called out. He turned and saw me. Anger would have been natural and deserved. But he was too overjoyed at my return from the dead, as he doubtless considered it. 'God forgive you, my boy, for what you have caused us to suffer,' was all that he said. I rode home behind the groom, and was received, I need not say, with what transports of delight. Ah me, how ungrateful are we all for the care and tenderness lavished upon us in childhood!

'All's well that ends well' is a comforting and satisfactory proverb. The good old dame was duly thanked and rewarded. Matters soon returned to their former footing. But one mischance, directly proceeding from the demoralisation of the household on that night, was of a serious and melancholy nature. Our inestimable Alderney cow took advantage of the open door of the feed-room to assimilate part of a truss of Lucerne hay; then, 'acting with no more judgment than to take a drink,' died from excessive inflation. An irreparable loss, and one remembered against me at intervals long afterwards.

Promoted to the Timor mare, I used to make pretty good time down Brickfield Hill and so round Black Wattle Swamp and Mr. Shepherd's garden. She was a good trotter, and I have owned a performer in that line—fast, extra, or only moderate, but always a trotter—from that time to this. A trotter is generally a good animal otherwise. I have seen few exceptions.

Mr. A. B. Spark, a mercantile magnate of the day, was our neighbour at Cook's River. I was sent with a letter early one spring morning to Tempé. There I found the good old gentleman in his garden. 'Can you eat strawberries, my boy?' was his prompt inquiry. It is unnecessary to repeat my answer. 'Then set to, and we'll have breakfast afterwards.' That is the way to talk to a boy! I could have died for him; I respect his memory now. At breakfast he told me that the pretty freestone, white-columned house had been built on the model of a Greek temple in the Vale of Tempé. Hence its classical name, which it still retains. The fresh eggs, laid by pure Spanish hens, were the largest I had ever seen. When he showed me some lop-eared rabbits after breakfast and promised me a pair, my heart was almost too full. I rode back the happiest boy in the land, and never forgot the old gentleman's amazing kindness.

It may be that kindly memory, eliding the darker shadows of the past, presents the colonial period which I am recalling, from 1831 to 1840, as almost Arcadian in peaceful simplicity, in steadfast industry, in freedom from atrocious crime, compared with later developments. And yet New South Wales was then to all intents and purposes a convict colony. Shiploads of prisoners arrived from time to time. Expirees from Tasmania no doubt made their way to a land where wages were comparatively high, and where new country offered a refuge from close official inspection. Whether the old-fashioned rule—strict, vigilant, unrelaxing—was better suited to the natural man, free or bond, than the present mercy-mongering management, may partly be judged by results.

'The bush'—a vast and trackless wilderness—was gradually being occupied and reclaimed by that strange lover of the waste places of the earth, the wilful, wicked, wandering Anglo-Saxon. Tragedies from time to time doubtless occurred. Bushrangers were not unknown, but what were they to the Kellys, the Halls and Gilbert, the Clarks and Morgans? Aboriginal blacks were shot occasionally; more than one cruel murder was brought home to the perpetrators, for which they justly atoned. At the same time a lonely hut-keeper or shepherd was often found prone and motionless, speared or clubbed as the case might be; many a stock-rider's horse came home without him. Yet, in a general way, life and property were far more secure under the modified martial law of the period than they have been known to be under a constitutional Government and quasi-democratic rule. When it is considered that for half a century the worst criminals of the old country, as well as the more ordinary rogues, had been sent to Australia, it says much for the management or for the material that so orderly and improvable a society was evolved.

If there were occasional crimes of deepest dye, who could feel surprise? The wonder was that they were so few in comparison to the population. Captain Knatchbull, ex-post-captain R.N., knocks out the brains of a poor washerwoman for the sake of eight pounds sterling, ending on the gallows a life of curiously varied villainy, which had included attempted poisoning, mutiny, and betrayal of comrades. There was the memorable 'Fisher's Ghost' tragedy, in which a supernatural agent was alleged to have led to the discovery of a deed of blood. There were crimes, doubtless, that cried aloud to heaven for vengeance, but which never will be fully known till the Great Day. But discovery, arraignment, and trial followed close on the heels of wrongdoers. In a general way—I assert it unhesitatingly—Sydney was as quiet, as peaceful and orderly in appearance as any town in Britain, save in the purlieus of that half-recognised Alsatia, 'The Rocks'; more decent, sober, and outwardly well-behaved than George Street and Pitt Street in 1887.

It may truly be suggested that one of the great dangers of modern civilisation—certainly of Australian national life—would appear to be the crowding of an unreasonable proportion of the inhabitants into the cities and larger towns.

An increasingly dangerous class is there encouraged to grow and multiply, averse to the honest and well-paid toil of the country, preferring to it a precarious employment in a city, with the accompaniment of the baser pleasures; clamouring at every interval of employment for relief works, subsisting but for _panem et circenses_, like the profligate populace of old Rome, the pandering to which eventually sapped the grandeur and glory of the Mistress of the World. _Absit omen!_

At the corner of Elizabeth and King Streets might have been seen a provisional lock-up, used for the temporary detention of criminals about to be tried at the adjoining courts. A rudely-hewn pillar of sandstone had been deposited there, and served as a seat for wayfarers or persons more immediately concerned. We schoolboys were chiefly interested in the stocks, that old-fashioned detainer in which drunken and disorderly persons were securely placed for such periods—a portion of a day—as the magistrates might consider expedient. In such fashion was Hudibras fast imprisoned when the lady and her steward coming by gazed on him bowed to the earth with shame. In this ancient engine of distraint upon the human property, in default of other, did the malcontents of the day sit, stolid and defiant, upon a more or less uncomfortable seat, 'fast bound in misery and iron.' One doubts whether it would not be more effectual now than the short sentence served in a comfortable, secluded establishment, which the modern offender boasts that 'he can do on his head.'

During the whole period of the time embraced in my reminiscence, I cannot recall a week while we lived in Sydney or near to it, that the Domain and Botanical Gardens were not a joy, a solace, a luxury to us and to the society with which we were acquainted. What a priceless boon was thus bestowed upon the inhabitants of Sydney then and for all time by the dedication of this lovely natural park to the public! What walks—what drives—what merry bathing parties—what lingering in summer eves—what early morning saunters has not this precious primeval fragment, this art-adorned yet beauteous wilderness, witnessed? The pleasure then enjoyed by the toil-worn citizen, the stranger, or the invalid was more exquisite and intense, from an assured freedom from that modern pest, the larrikin. All who were met with in the gardens were courteous and well-mannered persons for the most part; for whomsoever conducted themselves otherwise there was a short shrift, and if not a ready gallows, an effectively deterrent punishment.

The early formation of William Street, now the great arterial highway to Darlinghurst and the aristocratic suburbs, was then progressing. In its straight course it carved away a few acres of the Rosebank suburban property then owned by Mr. Laidley. On the triangular portion so excised were three white cedars, the most graceful of our shade trees. No doubt the proprietor was compensated for the severance and resumption, though not at the prices ruling in favour of latter-day claimants.

What fortunes might have been made by judicious, or even injudicious, purchasers of suburban land in those days! No one foresaw that any notable rise in value would take place in less than a century or two. That land purchased by the acre would sell for such prices in the life of the buyer, by _the foot_, entered not into the mind of man. Wharves, street frontages, building sites, allotments all passed under the hammer of the Government auctioneer of the day at curiously low prices. Who was to foresee that gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, and tin were all to make their appearance in peaceful, pastoral New South Wales and her erstwhile appanage the Port Phillip District, afterwards the Colony of Victoria?

The great public schools of that day were our College, the King's School at Parramatta, and the Normal Institution, this last organised by Dr. Lang—that eminent colonising clergyman. The Reverend Robert Forrest was the Principal of the King's School. He was understood to have been a strict disciplinarian, as indeed he needed to be. We of the Sydney College thought ourselves superior in scholarship; but doubtless good work was done then as now at the Parramatta school.

Mr. Carmichael—Scottish, of course—presided at the Normal Institution, which was situated on the northern side of the Racecourse, or Hyde Park as at present named. We were near enough to play cricket together sometimes; also to fight, indeed, as occasions of strife will arise among schoolboys. Roland Cameron, a boy by nature warlike in the earlier stages of life, had then his celebrated combat, having challenged an oldster of the Normal, a head taller than himself. He didn't come off victorious, but he walked forth with an apparently calm consciousness that he couldn't be really conquered, which I have rarely seen paralleled among later and more tragic experiences.

OLD TIME THOROUGHBREDS