rung, and to see that the threepences in the glass box correspond to the number of passengers.  Yet not only does he drive fast and carefully along the crowded thoroughfares, but it is difficult to escape without paying.  Several times when a ’bus has been crowded I have tried the effect of omitting payment.  Invariably the driver has touched his bell, and if that is not attended to, he puts his face to the chink through which change is passed, and having re-counted the number of people in the ’bus, civilly intimates that ’some gentleman has forgotten to put in his fare.’  Where the omnibus companies have not penetrated, waggonettes similar to those previously described pioneer the road, and on some well-frequented lines they run in competition with the omnibuses.

I don’t know that it would be true to say that the number of horses and vehicles in the streets strikes the stranger’s eye as a rule.  A man accustomed to the traffic of London streets passes over the traffic of Melbourne, great as it is for a town of its size, without notice.  But I think he cannot but notice the novel nature of the Melbourne traffic, the prevalence of that light four-wheeled vehicle called the ‘buggy,’ which we have imported via America, and the extraordinary number of horsemen he meets.  The horses at first sight strike the eye unpleasantly.  They look rough, and are rarely properly groomed.  But, as experience will soon teach the stranger, they are far less delicate than English horses.  They get through a considerably greater quantity of work, and are less fatigued at the end of it.

A walk down Collins Street or Flinders Lane would astonish some of the City Croesuses.  But if a visitor really wishes to form an idea of the wealth concentrated in Melbourne, he cannot do better than spend a week walking round the suburbs, and noting the thousands of large roomy houses and well-kept gardens which betoken incomes of over two thousand a year, and the tens of thousands of villas whose occupants must be spending from a thousand to fifteen hundred a year.  All these suburbs are connected with the town by railway.  A quarter of an hour will bring you ten miles to Brighton, and twelve minutes will take you to St. Kilda, the most fashionable watering-place.  Within ten minutes by rail are the inland suburbs, Toorak, South Yarra, and Kew, all three very fashionable; Balaclava, Elsterwick, and Windsor, outgrowths of St. Kilda, also fashionable; Hawthorn, which is budding well; Richmond, adjacent to East Melbourne, and middle class; and Emerald Hill and Albert Park, with a working-class population.  Adjoining the city itself are North Melbourne, Fitzroy, Carlton, Hotham, and East Melbourne, all except the last inhabited by the working-classes.  Emerald Hill and Hotham have handsome town halls of their own, and the larger of these suburbs form municipalities.  Nearly everybody who can lives in the suburbs, and the excellence of the railway system enables them to extend much farther away from the city than in Adelaide or Sydney.  It is strange that the Australian townsman should have so thoroughly inherited the English love of living as far as possible away from the scene of his business and work during the day.