Melbourne is the commercial metropolis of Australia, as Sydney is the capital of the penal colony, and though both are large, well-built and thriving cities, they are strikingly in contrast with each other.  One is the scion of a lordly house, “to the manner born”—­the other, the parvenu of yesterday, whose gold makes his position.  Melbourne is to all intents a European city, with its boulevards and regular streets, whole blocks of costly stores and princely dwellings, and environed by elegant villas and country-seats adorned with gardens, vineyards and choice shrubbery.  It has its English and Chinese quarters, the latter as essentially Chinese as if built in the Celestials’ own land, and brought over, mandarin buttons, tiny teapots, opium-pipes and all, in one of their own junks.  The English quarter contains, besides the government buildings, several schools, hospitals, churches and benevolent institutions, the public library, a polytechnic hall, a national museum, theatres and opera-houses, all built in a style alike elegant and substantial.  The library only ten years after it was opened numbered 41,000 volumes, and has since been largely increased.  Science rather than literature, and practical utility more than entertainment, have been kept in the ascendency in the management of this institution.  The hall is open for daily lectures, and some valuable telescopes and other apparatus belong to the institution.  The cabinet of natural history contains many rare specimens that serve to elucidate the ancient and modern history of the country, especially in regard to some of the animals and vegetables indigenous to the island.  The museum is built on a commanding eminence, and from its spacious windows one sees clearly to the opposite side of Hobson’s Bay.

[Illustration:  THE ENVIRONS OF MELBOURNE.]

The city is not built on the sea-coast, but two or three miles from the shore, its port being Sandridge, with which it is connected by railway.  Vessels of all nations crowd the harbor, and the streets are as full of busy life and gay frivolity as those of Havre or Marseilles.  The drives in the environs of the city are replete with picturesque beauty—­meadows dotted with many—­tinted flowers and magnificent forest trees, about which are festooned flowering vines and creepers.  Their thick branches are the resort of cockatoos, parrots and paroquets in brilliant plumage, and perhaps most beautiful of all, because most rare, sparrows, not clothed, like ours, in sombre gray, but rejoicing in vestments of green and gold.  But brilliancy of plumage is the solitary charm of these feathered beauties, for their voices are harsh and their song a very burlesque on the name of music.

FORECAST.

  When I, for ever out of human sight,
    Shall seem beyond the wish for anything,
  Oh then believe at morning and at night
    My soul shall listen for thy whispering.