The Argus (Melbourne)

“ Although the Argus has a very influential and advertisement-bringing class of readers, and penetrates beyond the limits of Victoria, by far the largest circulation in Australia is that of the Melbourne Age, a penny four-page sheet, published in Melbourne, which boasts of an issue of 50,000 copies daily, almost all absorbed within Australia. ”

“ Later he removed to London, and about 1868 joined the ‘Standard,’ acting as leader-writer and sub-editor in the colonial and literary departments. At this period he was also home correspondent for the ‘Melbourne Argus.’ He occupied rooms in Pall Mall before settling at 52 Bedford Gardens, Campden Hill, where he died of cancer on 7 Nov. ”

“ An extensive mud swamp and tea-tree scrub seem to surround you, till the fog, in which it is constantly enveloped during the early part of the day, has cleared away, and you see the very beautiful city of Melbourne, not two miles distant, built on a gentle acclivity, well relieved by the wooded backgrounds stretched out before you. You can trace the meanderings of the Yarra-yarra as it winds through the scrub, and partly encircles the city in a tortuous course, making six miles, which by railway is barely two. ”

“ You see we haven't made our pile yet, and must go on. I wish we were on our way back, with our pockets well lined. Although you have been robbed, you've got a good sum waiting for you in Melbourne."
"True; I shall be all right when I get there, but as I am at present situated, it seems very uncertain when I shall have that good fortune."
"I'll tell you what you'd better do, Granger. Come along with us, and join the first party we meet bound for the city. You will, at all events, be sure of your victuals till then." ”

“ It is more settled, more homogeneous,131 more cosmopolitan than elsewhere in Australia, so that here, if anywhere, one loses the sense of a new country, which is at the same time part of its charm. The women and girls in Melbourne are also prettier, and more prettily dressed than elsewhere, and it makes a cult of charming-looking, elderly, white-haired matrons, wearing the dignity of their years becomingly. Not that pretty women and girls are not to be found everywhere, but Melbourne has a colder, more bracing climate, and is more in touch with the outside world. ”

“ When it has finished playing with the dust it brings in the rain. And Melbourne, with its wide, shelterless streets swept from end to end by a rain-storm—Melbourne with its blank spaces and its vanished crowds—is the one place on earth where the new arrival would choose not to be. ”

“ At the further end of the street the din and bustle are less, and I see a large structure standing in an open space, looking black against the starlit sky. I afterwards find that it is the Parliament House.
Such is my first introduction to Melbourne. It is evidently a place stirring with life. After strolling through some of the larger streets, and everywhere observing the same indications of wealth, and traffic, and population, I took the train for Sandridge, and slept a good sound sleep in my bunk on board the 'Yorkshire' for the last time. ”

“ Let us sum up. “The Anglo-Saxon race, the Norman blood:” a colony made of this: a city into whose hands wealth and its power is suddenly phenomenally cast: a general sense of movement, of progress, of conscious power. This, I say, is Melbourne—Melbourne with its fine public buildings and tendency towards banality, with its hideous houses and tendency towards anarchy. And Melbourne is, after all, the Melbournians. Alas, then, how will this city and its civilization stand the test of a really fine city and fine civilization? how far will they answer the requirements of such a civilization? ”

“ Melbourne is a city of fine broad streets, handsome public buildings, splendid shops, and vast warehouses. Indeed, a stranger cannot fail to be struck with its metropolitan-like character. Only forty years ago the site on which it stands was a mere swamp with a few log huts; now its population is about the third of a million souls. For this population a series of educational institutions of an unusually high character have been founded, and are in active operation. ”

“ Leaving the picture gallery, a long corridor leads to the free library, and Melbourne is justly proud of its beautiful and luxurious reading-room, in every way worthy of the chief city of a great democratic country. ”

“ With such a climate it seems extraordinary that the private gardens in Melbourne are not more of a success than they are. One reason, I believe, is that the people are too busy to trouble, another that they are too restless: they are always moving house—sometimes literally so, for it is no uncommon thing to meet a fair-sized wooden edifice coming along the road drawn upon wheels, by a long train of horses, and looking like a gigantic snail. ”

“ One thing struck me especially—the very few old or grey-haired people one meets with in the streets of Melbourne. They are mostly young people; and there are comparatively few who have got beyond the middle stage of life. And no wonder. For how young a city Melbourne is! Forty years since there was not a house in the place.
Where the Melbourne University now stands, a few miserable Australian blacks would meet and hold a corroboree; but, except it might be a refugee bush-ranger from Sydney, there was not a white man in all Victoria. ”

“ On the whole I did not like what I saw, and I wonder how my earth half endures it.'
'Still, the civilisation you found in Melbourne is considered high, and its people are reckoned as very progressive.'
'Then why such heat and dust? Why such foul smells? Why so much hurrying and crushing? And why, if they are a civilised people, are they all striving to be first, to get best places, as they did at the railway station? Our crowds are far bigger than theirs, but we never push each other about and speak harshly. We can dispose of our crowd in half the time they can, or less. ”

“ Melbourne is the city of stew-pans and stockbrokers. They know how to make money, but not how to spend it. If they have pleasure, it borders on pain as lust does on love. All the beauty they know is the beauty of light; heat is a stranger to them. Their music lacks the minor keys. Years ago their one poet, Gordon, ran away from the city, and took refuge in the bush: if he were alive now, he would come to Sydney. No poet, no painter, no musician will be brought forth out of Melbourne.—You will make fine logicians, you Melbournians, and it does a man’s heart good to think of your cog-wheels ”

“ The senses of the musing spectator are filled to saturation with the sights and sounds proper to the largest, the most highly civilised, the most prosperous city in the world, for the years of its existence. Stranger than fiction does it not seem, that in the month of April, in the year of grace 1840, we should have migrated en famille from Sydney to assist in the colonisation of Port Phillip, in the founding of this city of Melbourne? ”

“ And yet life is different and the people are different, and there are many things about that would not be found in the best houses in Melbourne or in London. Our fires are warm and bright and keep the rooms pleasant, and yet they never burn anything. ”

“ The Melbourne men work hard enough when they are at it, but once free of their offices, they are like boys out from school. They do not talk shop, they do not even think of it; and at one o’clock on Saturdays I believe it is only by some stupendous effort of will that—as they flock out p. 219from chambers, offices, and counting-houses, off to a cricket or football match, race-meeting, or golf—they desist from throwing their hats in the air and shouting from sheer delight. ”

“ If strangers come to Melbourne it is for the most part either to find work and carve out a new future for themselves, or to escape from the responsibilities and duties which they have pressed too insistently on them in the Old World. ”

“ It has manufactures of boots and clothing, foundries and flour-mills. It has a hot climate. Its water supply is abundant, but defective drainage impairs its healthfulness. First settled in 1835, it was incorporated in 1842, and nine years later was made capital of the newly constituted colony. It was the scene of an exhibition in 1888, of a great industrial struggle in 1890, and of a very severe financial crisis in 1893.
Melbourne, William Lamb, Viscount, English statesman, born in London; educated at Cambridge and Glasgow Universities ”

“ I have, however, arrived at Elizabeth Street, which runs at right angles to Bourke Street and only stops at the Yarra Bank or Flinders Street, and I am at once convinced of the growth and splendour of Melbourne. The shops are superb, the buildings are beautifully and splendidly built, and the crowds of people are immense. ”

“ Every little shopman, every successful artisan and his wife, cherishes, with few exceptions, the one ambition—to have a tiny place in the country, to farm a little, keep poultry, grow fruit, and live in the open. People settled for life, as one might imagine, in comfortable homes in Melbourne will give up everything—in what can but seem the most surprising fashion to those who have not got that touch of the wild, or the patriarchal, in their blood—and start afresh. ”

“ That is what Melbourne is. It is a city, a city where money is made, and big business goes on. It is to Melbourne and to Collins Street that you must come if you are to talk to the men who are planning and financing and ordering the Australia of the future.
There is a Melbourne of another kind, just as there are many Londons. There is Melbourne of the University, nestling in its gardens and secure in the strongest foundation a University can have, the solid research of its professors and teachers. ”

“ They enjoy a lovely climate, have boundless capacities for expansion, and are inhabited by Englishmen who differ from ourselves only in the fact that they live at a distance. With the present means of communication, Melbourne is now as near to London as the North of Scotland was to the South of England less than a century ago. ”

“ After all, these landowners have not stood alone. They have employed an enormous number of men, in an enormous number of ways, from the shearers who clip their sheep to the stevedores who ship their wool, the people who transfer it by railway or bullock waggon, the p. 101people who buy it—English, French, and Flemish wool-buyers, who live in Melbourne for two or three months each year, and spend money there; the tradespeople, servants, and artisans.
A big station is like a camp of soldiers ”

“ Yet it is, on the whole, that very necessity for ever pushing onward, for hewing wood and drawing water to keep this marvellous new household going, that makes Melbourne such a cruelly hard place for the merely intellectual man or woman, the writer, the artist, the poet, the dreamer. Between the upper and nether millstone of the merchants, professional classes, and landowners, and the artisans, mechanics, and labourers, they are crushed so closely that their very existence is apt to remain unnoticed. It is no good blaming these people ”

“ First Impressions of Melbourne—Survey of the City—The Streets—Collins Street—The Traffic—Newness and Youngness of Melbourne—Absence of Beggars—Melbourne an English City—The Chinese Quarter—The Public Library—Pentridge Prison—The Yarra River—St. Kilda—Social Experiences in Melbourne—A Marriage Ball—Melbourne Ladies—Visit to a Serious Family.
I arrive in Melbourne towards evening, and on stepping out of the railway-train find myself amidst a glare of gas lamps. Outside the station the streets are all lit up, the shops are brilliant with light, and well-dressed people are moving briskly about. ”

“ The public amusements of a large city often aid one in forming a just idea of its development in other directions. Those of this capital of the southern hemisphere are numerous, well conducted, and well attended,—a sure evidence of prosperity and general thrift. People from inland who have money to spend are attracted to such places as will afford them the greatest variety of reasonable amusements; and hence Melbourne, rather than Sydney, has become the resort of these pleasure-seekers. ”

“ MELBOURNE is one of the best business cities of Australia, and to a large extent the money centre of the country. It has a number of rich men, its people are great spenders, and money is kept on the move most of the time. ”

“ QUARANTINE ISLAND.
Yet lunatics arrive and make lunacy rampant, and a whole city is left after such a visitation an asylum of melancholia—Mad Melbourne. Lunacy frequently takes the form of egotism. Peasants imagine themselves princes; Calibans believe themselves to be Adonises; beggars imagine themselves millionaires. It is a harmless vanity and hurts no one, but a mad city may ruin thousands by suddenly imagining itself a gold mine. Melbourne a few years ago imagined it suddenly became the hub of the universe. The world and his wife had but one burning desire—that was to live in Melbourne. ”

“ Melbourne is not a cosmopolitan city. It neither lies in the direct route of globe-trotters, who will, indeed, often miss the whole of Australia and pass on to New Zealand or the Pacific Isles, nor does it possess many natural interests or curiosities. It is a level-headed place, too, and, though it amuses itself well enough, it does not cater for that class of people who will search the world over for a new sensation or exotic pleasure. ”