None the less “The Age” gained upon “The Argus”, and has, I understand, long surpassed it in that most prominent of all tests, the circulation.  Perhaps in profits also.  When I inquired lately of one of “The Argus” chiefs upon those delicate points, the reply was, that “The Argus” was not up to “The Age’s” circulation, “but, further, deponent sayeth not.”  This does not mean, however, the loss of position as the Southern “Times”, for “the leading journal” is by no means at the head of the London press in point of circulation.  Where it may be, however, when it comes down from the aristocratic threepence to the common penny of its brethren remains to be seen; and I am told that all has long been in readiness for the change when the fitting times arrives.  And so, as “The Argus” is still twopence to “The Age’s” penny, inverted relations as to circulation may some day not be impossible there also.  The circulation of the daily “Age”, by my last account, is close upon 70,000, which is not “a poor show for Kilmarnock,” in that sense of the joke.

In 1858, Wilson quitted the colony “for good,” as the phrase is, followed by Mackinnon, and later on by their third and only other partner, Mr. Allan Spowers.  “The Argus” was now an established principle of Victoria, and prosperity was assured.  After a few more years of economizing, until the business debt was finally cleared off, the partners could enjoy to the full their great and well-merited fortunes.  Wilson and Mackinnon took up palatial country residences—­the one at first at Addington, ten miles from London, and later at the pleasant and classic Hayes Place, the favourite abode of the great Chatham; the other at Elfordleigh, in Devonshire; while Spowers lived chiefly in London, where, as the common favourite of both, he, with his genial temper, kept the peace between his seniors, who, with an infirmity too common to human nature, were prone to disagree, for want, let us suppose, of anything else to think about.

Mackinnon, with his energetic mind, had been the most concerned in building up the later stages of the “Argus” fortunes.  Both Wilson and I had a high opinion of his qualities, as the following incident may show.  He and I, as I have said in my sketch of the Henty family, were anti-transportation delegates to Tasmania in 1852, and, proceeding by steamer to Launceston, we had for fellow-passengers a considerable body of returned diggers, most of them with their bags of gold, and a good proportion of them with expressions of face one would rather not meet if beyond call of the police.  In short, a good sprinkling of returned convicts were of the number, with their “piles,” acquired possibly quite as much by robbing as by digging.  After a few hours at sea, a rumour reached the cabin that there had been a robbery, one of these ruffians having seized a bag of gold from one of the other digger passengers.  The thief had at once disappeared below and secured himself within a surrounding of