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.  Its leading articles are as able and even more virulent than those of the Argus.  Its telegraphic intelligence is good, and in dramatic and literary criticisms it is second only to the Argus in Australia.  But its news is comparatively poor, owing to its being only a single-sheet paper, and it caters for a far inferior class than the Argus.  Its inventive ability, in which it altogether surpasses the London Daily Telegraph, has brought it the nickname of ‘Ananias,’ and it is essentially the people’s journal.  Just as in politics the Argus is not only the organ but the leader of the ultra-Conservative party, even so the Age coaches the Democracy.  To its influence is mainly due the ascendency which Mr. Berry’s party held for so long, and the violence of the measures which poor Mr. Berry took in hand.  It was the Age which originated the idea of the Plebiscite, and of the progressive land-tax.  It is protectionist to the backbone, having commenced the cry of ‘Victoria for the Victorians,’ and fosters a policy of isolation from the sister colonies.  Prominent amongst its leader-writers is Mr. C. H. Pearson, whose Democracy is at once the most ultra and the most cultured, the most philosophical and the most dogmatic.  Another leader of the Radical party who frequently writes for the Age is Mr. Dakin, the rising young man of Victorian politics, who represents talent and education apart from culture.

The third morning paper in Melbourne is the Daily Telegraph, a penny Conservative sheet which has never attained any large influence or circulation, although edited by a man of considerable literary ability.  The evening papers are the Herald, which is supposed to represent the Catholic party; and the World, which is rather American in tone, but very readable.  Both are penny papers exerting very little influence.

In all the Victorian papers, of whatever party, it is noticeable that Victorian topics, and especially Victorian politics, occupy an almost exclusive share both of leading and news columns; while the New South Wales and South Australian papers devote far more attention to intercolonial and European affairs.  The fact is that Victoria is much more self-contained and independent of the mother country than its neighbours.  Somehow or other there is more local news obtainable, more going-on, in fact, in Melbourne than in Sydney and Adelaide put together.  Everything and everybody in Victoria moves faster.  Hence there is more to chronicle; and greater interest is taken in what is going on in the colony.  The political excitement of the country is, after all, but an outcome of this national vivacity of disposition.  Half a dozen Berrys put together could not raise one quarter of the feeling in Adelaide, far less in Sydney.