Of the public buildings of Sydney, the handsomest are the Treasury, the Colonial Secretary’s office, and the Lands Office, each four or five stories high, and close to the water’s edge.  The Colonial Secretary’s office is only second to the Melbourne Law Courts amongst the completed buildings of Australia.  It is lofty, massive, and dignified outwardly, elegant and spacious inside, although it has been fitted up in the most incongruous fashion with odds and ends of third-rate statuary, imitation bronzes, etc., until it looks like an old curiosity-shop.  The University, though comparatively an old building, still holds its ground amongst the best, and may well be proud of its splendidly proportioned hall, built in fifteenth-century Gothic.  The Roman Catholic Cathedral, which has just been opened, is also well proportioned.  The length is 350 feet; width within transept 118 feet; width of nave and aisle 74 feet; height about ninety feet.  There is to be a central tower 120 feet high, and two towers with spires which will rise to a height of 260 feet.  The Anglican Cathedral, though not large, is a handsome building with two towers, in fourteenth-century Gothic.  The Post Office will for many years remain a fragment of what may or may not be a handsome building.  The Town Hall has evidently been built with the idea of at all hazards making it larger than the Melbourne Town Hall.  So far it is a success.  But architecturally it is nothing more than a splendid failure—­over-decorated and ginger-bready.  Curiously enough it is built upon the site of the burial-place of the early settlement—–­forming a sort of Westminster Abbey for the first settlers.  There are four theatres, but none well fitted or decorated.  Palatial hospitals and asylums of course abound, but the Parliament House is wretchedly small.

Unfortunately Sydney has very few reserves, and those few she keeps in bad order, with the exception of the Botanical Garden, situated on an arm of the land almost entirely surrounded by water.  It is the most charming public garden I have ever seen; inferior to that of Adelaide in detail, but superior in the tout ensemble.  Almost equally beautiful is the situation of Government House, a comfortable Tudor mansion, but rather small for purposes of entertainment.

Amongst the commercial buildings, the new head offices of the Australian Mutual Provident Society are pre-eminent.  They cost no less than L50,000.  The banks are not equal to either the Melbourne or the Adelaide banks.  But the insurance offices, warehouses, etc., though not nearly as numerous, are quite up to the Melbourne standard in size, although for the reasons already given they do not show to so great an advantage as their merit deserves.  Of the appearance of the shops I have already written in my letter about Melbourne.  They are not so fine as in Melbourne nor so well stocked, and are pretty much on a level with those in an English town of the same size.