Apart from bush terms, there are town appellations, such as ‘larrikin,’ which means a ‘rough.’  The word is said to have originated with an Irish policeman, who spoke of some boys who had been brought before the Melbourne Police Court as ‘larriking around,’ instead of ‘larking.’  To ‘have a nip’ is to take a ‘nobbler.’  A white man born in Australia is a ‘colonial,’ vulgarly a ‘gum-sucker;’ if he was born in New South Wales, he is also a ‘cornstalk.’  An aboriginal is always a ‘black fellow.’  A native of Australia would mean a white man born in the colony.  The diggings have furnished the expressive phrase ‘to make your pile.’  A ’nugget’—­pace Archbishop Trench—­was a Californian importation.  When speaking of a goldfield a colonist says ‘on.’  Thus you live ‘on Bendigo,’ but ‘in’ or ‘at’ Sandhurst—­the latter being the new name for the old goldfield town.  To ‘shout’ drinks has no connection with the neuter verb of dictionary English.  A ‘shicer’ is first a mining claim which turns out to be useless, and then anything that does so.  There is room for a very interesting dictionary of Australianisms.  But I have no time to collect such a list.  The few words which I have given will serve as an indication of the bent of colonial genius in the manufacture of a new dialect; and as they are given without any effort, just as they have come to my mind in the course of one evening’s thinking as I write, they may fairly be taken as being amongst the commonest.

I have headed this letter ’Literature and Art,’so that I am morally bound to say something about the latter, although there is next to nothing to say.  Australia has not yet produced any artist of note.  Perhaps the best is Mr. E. C. Dowling, and he is a Tasmanian.  Resident in Victoria is a M. Louis Buyelot, a landscape artist of considerable merit.  Excepting him, we have no artists here whose works rise beyond mere mediocrity.  Mr. Summers was a Victorian, but his fame is almost unknown in his own country.  Thanks to Sir Redmond Barry, Victoria possesses a very fair National Gallery attached to the Melbourne Public Library.  Some of the paintings in it are excellent, notably Mr. Long’s ‘Esther;’ the majority very mediocre.  For my own part I prefer the little gallery at Sydney, which, though it has not nearly so many paintings, has also not nearly so many bad ones, and owns several that are really good, mostly purchased from the exhibitions.  Adelaide has also recently bought a few pictures to form the nucleus of a gallery.

By means of Schools of Design and Art, the colonial Governments have, during the last few years, been doing all in their power to encourage the growth of artistic taste, but the whole bent of colonial life is against it.  Art means thought and care, and the whole teaching of colonial life is to ‘manage’ with anything that can be pressed into service in the shortest time and at the smallest expense.  It is only fair to mention as a tribute to the laudable