The most unpleasant feature about Sydney is, that there is a thoroughly untidy look about the place.  It is in a perennial state of deshabille; whereas Melbourne nearly always has its dress-clothes on.  In keeping with the wretched pavements, the muddy crossings, and the dust, are the clothes of the people you meet in the streets.  Nobody seems to care much how they dress, and without being exactly countrified in their apparel, the Sydneyites succeed in looking pre-eminently dowdy.

The water-supply is not always quite as plentiful as could be wished; but on the other hand, there is an excellent system of deep drainage, and the eye is not offended by open sewers, as in Melbourne.  You will notice that there are not so many private carriages here, and fewer horsemen.  The traffic appears greater, but this is entirely owing to the narrowness of the streets.  It is not so rapid, as you will easily perceive.

You land, as I think I mentioned, in the heart of the city, and, unless you prefer Shanks’s pony, must perforce take a hansom to your hotel, or, if you have much luggage, two hansoms, for four-wheelers are almost unknown.  In compensation, the Sydney hansoms are the cleanest and fastest you will ever have the good fortune to come across.  Steam trams run out to the railway station, which is at the farther end of the town, and to all the suburbs.  There is practically but one hotel to go to—­Petty’s—­and that very inferior.  In most matters of this kind Sydney is only a second-rate edition of Melbourne.

The beauties of Sydney are certainly rather natural than artificial, and since one can always see a big town more or less like Melbourne, whilst the scenery of Sydney Harbour is almost unique of its kind, if I were obliged to see only one of the two places, I would rather see Sydney.  But although, Sydney is poorly laid out, it must not be imagined that it is poorly built.  On the contrary.  Its buildings are put in the shade as regards size by those of Melbourne but if you had not seen Melbourne first, you would certainly have been surprised by the number and size of the public buildings of Sydney.  The rich man loses his sense of the proportionate value of moneys.  But Sydney has the great advantage of possessing superior building material in a red and grey sandstone of great durability, which forms the substratum of the whole district in which it is built, while Melbourne has mainly to rely on a blue stone found at some distance, and has to import the stone for its best buildings from either Sydney or Tasmania.  I must confess too, that I prefer the general style of architecture in Sydney to that most common in Melbourne.  First and foremost, owing to the more limited area of the business part of the town, the Sydney buildings are much loftier.  Melbourne and Adelaide always look to me as if some one had taken his seat upon the top of them and squashed them down.  Sydney is taller and more irregular.  It climbs up and down a whole series of hills, and protrudes at all kinds of unexpected points.  The city proper has no very definite boundaries, and you hardly know where the city begins and the suburbs end.