After the Argus I should place the South Australian Register, published in Adelaide, as the best daily paper in Australia.  In style and get-up it is almost an exact copy of its Melbourne contemporary, and its published price is twopence.  In reports and correspondence it is quite as enterprising, but its leading columns and critiques being almost all written in the office, are necessarily weaker.  The whole paper is less carefully edited, but its opinions are more liberal, and it is in no sense a party paper.  It May, indeed, be said that not even the Times exercises so much influence in its sphere as does the Register.  It not merely reflects public opinion, but, to a great extent, leads it, and it must be admitted that, on the whole, it leads it very sensibly.  It may be urged against the Register, that its leading articles are wanting in literary brilliancy as compared with those of the Argus; but they are far more moderate and judicial in political matters.  The extraordinary merits of this paper, in so small a community, are due partly to its having been, at a critical period in its existence, edited, managed and partly owned by the late Mr. Howard Clark, a man of great culture and ability, and partly to the close competition of the South Australian Advertiser, a twopenny paper which is well sustained in every department, and noted for occasional leading articles of great brilliancy.

The Sydney Morning Herald is the richest newspaper property in Australia.  It has correspondents in almost every capital in Europe, including St. Petersburg—­where the Argus and Register are not represented—­publishes an immense quantity of news, and is edited by an able and liberal-minded man.  But the absence of competition makes it inferior in enterprise to either the Argus, Register, or Advertiser.  Its leading columns are sound but commonplace, and there is a fatal odour of respectable dulness about the paper.  A second paper called the Daily Telegraph was established in Sydney in 1879, which seems to be meeting the wants of the penny public, but it is very inferior to the Herald, or to the second-rate papers in the other colonies.  In Adelaide, the evening papers are merely penny reprints of half of the morning papers.  In Sydney, the Herald proprietors publish the Echo, a sprightly little sheet; but the best evening paper is the Evening News, which caters for the popular taste and is somewhat sensational.

The wants of the bushman, who relies on one weekly paper for his sole intellectual food, and who, though often well educated, is far away from libraries or books of any kind, have given rise to a class of weekly papers which are quite sui generis.  The model on which they are all formed is the Australasian, published by the Argus proprietors, which is still the best known and the best.  Some idea of