and can hardly be said to have won even a succes d’estime.  No little of its failure is attributable to the success which has attended its Melbourne rival, founded in 1855, at the height of the gold-fever, and which may be said to have been floated on gold directly, and kept in deep water by it indirectly.  Before Sydney could recover the effects of the emigration of those years, Melbourne was well under way, and the size and central situation of the latter city contributed no little to the success of its young university, which, under unusually politic as well as able management, increased annually in size and usefulness, until now no less than 1,500 students have graduated in its halls, and the number of undergraduates attending its lectures exceeds 280.  It confers degrees in arts, laws, science, medicine, surgery, and engineering—­the standard for which is above that of Oxford and Cambridge, and in medicine is higher than that of London itself.  All the professors are men of first-rate ability.  Amongst them are an F.R.S. (M.  McCoy, Professor of Palaeontology), and Dr. Hearn, the well-known authority on jurisprudence and constitutional law.  By acting as an examining body for the secondary schools, the university has not only widened its sphere of usefulness and materially raised the general educational standard of the colony, but has gained influence in circles, into which not even its name would probably otherwise have entered.  Already a certain healthy tone and esprit de corps obtains amongst the students, and ceteris paribus a Melbourne graduate is professionally to be preferred to an Oxonian or Cantab., at any rate for colonial work.  Thanks in no small degree to its educating and civilizing influence on the community, an anti-materialistic voice is beginning to make itself heard in Victoria, and if it does not occupy itself too much with politics, it promises to become an intellectual centre.  It would not be difficult to find faults in either its constitution or its teaching, but it has the great merit of taking the trouble to understand and keep abreast of the times.  All things considered, the Melbourne University may claim to have deserved the success it has commanded, and to be one of the greatest achievements of Victoria.

The present prosperity and bright prospects of New South Wales, together with the educational influence of the late exhibition, and an opportune bequest of L180,000 by a wealthy colonist, have lately stirred up the authorities of the Sydney University to make a grand effort to justify its existence.  A medical school—­the most successful side of the Melbourne ’varsity is to be established, and other improvements introduced.  But although the principal, Dr. Badham, is a better classic than any that the Melbourne University possesses, there is an indolence and laissez-faire about the Sydney University which must long keep it in the background.  Not until there is a thorough reformation in the whole