stories.  The log-hut stage is of course far past.  The weather-board cottage still lingers in the poorer outskirts of Melbourne, but is extinct in Adelaide, and fast becoming extinct in Melbourne.  The choice now is between brick and stone.  In Sydney the abundance of stone on the spot, gives it the preference; Adelaide, with less stone, builds chiefly in brick; Melbourne, which has to get its stone from a distance, uses hardly anything else but brick.  This, of course, for private houses.  There are plenty of admirable stone buildings in Melbourne, as I have already mentioned.

Now that the brick and stone age is firmly established the style of your house becomes a mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence.  With wages at from nine to twelve shillings a day, and with money so much dearer than at home, the Australian has necessarily to pay a much higher rent for his house.  Excluding, of course, ground-rents, which make London houses so expensive, I think one may fairly say that rents here are about double the rate they are at home, and yet, except for the rise in the value of land in the cities and their suburbs, house-property is by no means a remunerative investment.  Nevertheless, there is always a great demand for it.  The colonist is very fond of living in his own house and on his own bit of ground, and building societies and the extensive mortgage system which prevails enable him easily to gratify this desire.  I believe that at least ninety out of every hundred house-properties in Australia are mortgaged up to at least two-thirds of their value.  Out in the suburbs ground-rents are still low—­very low indeed in comparison with the selling value.  The reason of this is, that it pays to buy a house with a large piece of land attached, and to cut the land up and sell it in building allotments a few years afterwards.  If you can get a fair rent for the house, the land will pay its own way.

Architecturally speaking, there is little to admire.  If the public buildings fail in this respect, the private houses have at least the advantage over them, that for the most part they do not pretend to any architecture at all.  Many of the architects are self-taught, and have served little or no apprenticeship to the profession.  Indeed, it should rather be called a trade, since they often are merely successful builders, who have taken to planning and superintending the erection of buildings, instead of erecting them themselves.  This is one reason why private houses incline rather to the practical than to the beautiful.  Another cause is the practical spirit of the colonists, which looks upon expenditure for mere ornamental purposes as wasteful and extravagant.  Unless a man is really rich, he cannot afford the imputation of extravagance which any architectural expenditure will bring upon him.  With his business premises it is different.  Everyone understands that a merchant spends money in ornamenting his business premises, just as a tradesman