Wilson was now the country gentleman, able to live in almost princely style.  With his amiable and highly-cultured sister, who lived latterly with him, he kept a hospitable house, inviting the old colonists of his acquaintance, as they came and went to and from the old country.  He was not without faults of temper and impatience, increased probably by a feeling of physical weakness which denied him activities of mind and body to the extent his ambition for life’s utility would have preferred.  His tall, well-developed form and commanding presence, backed by his ample means, placed him easily in a leading position.  Now he would be pacing Hayes Place grounds with the frank and genial Archbishop Tait, who, on a visit to the parish, had dropped in with the Vicar, Mr. Reid.  Again he would be a well-known and welcome figure at dinners, “at homes,” picnics, and what not, with the Darwins, Lubbocks, Farrs, and the rest of the neighbourhood, scientific and otherwise, but the former by preference.  His chief trouble was a weak action of the heart, which for the last year or two kept him constantly in view of death.  He calmly regarded the prospect of the great change, put his affairs in order as he wished, and awaited “the call of God.”  He passed away with but slight suffering in the beginning of 1878, before completing his 64th year.  His remains were, by his own request, returned to the colony which, as he always insisted, he had served so long and so faithfully.  His large means were left chiefly to various charitable and other useful institutions in the colony.  Besides larger legacies to his relations, twenty-six of his oldest colonial friends enjoy for life a bequest of 100 pounds each per annum, and as these were the friends of the early and small times of Port Phillip, few of whom had prospered at all like himself, the help is not unneeded in most cases.  That all of these legatees were of the other sex is explained by the fact that, having been always a bachelor, he had an intense, although only a general admiration for the sex.  Very many others will, over an indefinite future, have reason to bless the name of Edward Wilson.

EARLY SOCIETY:  WAYS, MEANS, AND MANNERS.

“When rather from our acts we them derive
Than our fore-goers.” 
—­All’s Well that Ends Well.

The salient defect, for more or less interval at first, in all commencing colonial societies, is the disproportion of the female element; and thus, in the sparseness of homes and families, we have that hardness of social feature, which illustrates how much better is the one sex with the “helpmeet” provided in the other.  Early Port Phillip was no exception to this rule.  Ladies and children were comparatively rare objects.  From Tasmania and elsewhere there were a good many “choice spirits” in more than one meaning of the words.  There was a marvellous consumption of brandy, among such unusual proportions