Of colonial art there is not much to be said.  Sculpture is represented by an occasional statue brought from England.  Architecture in its higher form is an unknown quantity.  Painting is beginning to struggle towards the light, chiefly in the form of water-colour drawings.  Political satire finds expression in cartoons, for the most part of that crude sort which depicts public men as horrific ogres and malformed monsters of appalling disproportions.  Music, reading, and flower gardening are the three chief refining pastimes.  The number and size of the musical societies is worthy of note.  So are the booksellers’ shops and free libraries.  The books are the same as you see in London shops.  There is no colonial literature.  As for flowers, New Zealanders promise to be as fond of them as the Japanese.  There is a newspaper of some description in the Islands to about every 1,500 adults.  Every locality may thus count upon every item of its local news appearing in print.  The Colonists who support this system may be assumed to get what they want, though, of course, under it quality is to some extent sacrificed to number.  As a class the newspapers are honest, decent, and energetic as purveyors of news.  Every now and then public opinion declares itself on one side, though the better known newspapers are on the other.  But on the average their influence is not slight.  There is no one leading journal.  Of the four or five larger morning newspapers, the Otago Daily Times shows perhaps the most practical knowledge of politics and grasp of public business.  It is partisan, but not ferociously so, except in dealing with some pet aversion, like the present Minister of Lands.  You may read in it, too, now and then, what is a rarity indeed in colonial journalism—­a paragraph written in a spirit of pure, good-natured fun.

The working classes are better, the others more carelessly, dressed than in England.  The workpeople are at the same time more nomadic and thriftier.  Amongst the middle classes, industrious as they are, unusual thrift is rare.  Their hospitality and kindliness do not prevent them from being hard bargainers in business.

Compared with the races from which they have sprung, the Islanders seem at once less conventional, less on their guard, and more neighbourly and sympathetic in minor matters.  In politics they are fonder of change and experiment, more venturesome, more empirical, law-abiding, but readier to make and alter laws.  Hypercritical and eaten up by local and personal jealousies in public life, they are less loyal to parties and leaders, and less capable of permanent organization for a variety of objects.  They can band themselves together to work for one reform, but for the higher and more complex organization which seeks to obtain a general advance along the line of progress by honourable co-operation and wise compromise, they show no great aptitude.  In politics their pride is that they are practical, and, indeed, they are perhaps less ready than Europeans to deify theories and catchwords.  They are just as suspicious of wit and humour in public men, and just as prone to mistake dulness for solidity.  To their credit may be set down a useful impatience of grime, gloom, injustice, and public discomfort and bungling.