Phillipians were not likely to tread the same ground again without apprehension.

Really the changes have been so extraordinary since I have resided in the colony, that not a few years only seem to have passed over, but an age. Alas, for the honest, industrious man of forward-looking mind! the man "of thankful yesterdays and confident to-morrows; " who knew not that the emblem of fortune is a wheel; who had faith in governments, and who doubted not but wisdom and justice made their nests in high places! He now finds that the dawn was too gorgeous to sober down steadily into the homely, healthful light of the working day. In the convulsion of property he was tossed up, and shook bare into the world. Now all is over, and calm again; with the bricks of his ruin, other men have made themselves peaceful and comfortable dwellings.

How multifarious and complex are the wheels of civil polity! The oppressed, whom the machinery pinches, cry aloud-the National Director touches a small spring, and whilst the sufferers are considering whether they are eased or not-what tears, and groans, and wrathful menacings arise in other quarters, from those whom that slight touch has ruinously affected!

How comprehensive in intellect-how wise the head-how good the heart--how tower-like in justice and fortitude-ought that man to be who weighs in the hollow of his hand the present good and evil, and the future destinies of millions of his kind! A good statesman, the sovereign's sovereign, may not inaptly be compared to the oak. And, indeed—

What a grand and interesting tree is the British oak! What compass, what massiveness, and strength of bole. What widespreading and heavenward-ascending of multitudinous branches. How cool and deep, and refreshing its immensity of shadow. How stately in the calm, surrounded and endowed with the complacency of ages. How glorious in the storm, its gigantic arms flinging from it the winds, as a lion keeps at bay his assailants. There is ease in its flexibility, gracefulness in its motions, and beauty in its tranquillity. It is the representative of departed eras of freedom it is the bulwark. There is grandeur in its aspect and character; rest in its stateliness; sincerity and confidence in the sobriety of its hues; solace and shelter in its umbrageousness and strength; and its voice is the voice of power. When we think of manliness, we think of the British oak. When our souls are filled with the irresistible force and beauty of truth, and of the durability of virtue, our thoughts wander not far for a similitude of worth and continuance--they

go to the British oak; for as the whole earth, so is it; it is ma jestic and venerable; its benefits extend from shore to shore, and the uttermost parts of the ocean acknowledge the sceptre of its sovereignty.

Like it are some of the time-honoured families of our aristocracy and none more so than the house of Russell. Milton, Russell, and Hampden, are only other names for freedom and magnanimity; for the poetry of actual life, of the heart and the imagination.

Lord William Russell-what a name is that! Home and country-life and death-whatever there is grand and generous in principle, in patriotism—all that is holy in domestic life— felicitous in friendship or fortune-lofty in character, or heroic in action—and what is more-far more-great in suffering—in death-all start up before us at the mention of his name!

And Lady Rachel Russell-love, admiration, and tears, are her perpetual monument !

England owes them much: for brilliant deeds in high stations, inestimable gems of constancy and endurance in the conspicuous setting of martyrdom, fix themselves deep in the national heart, and diffuse themselves through the national character.

England owes them much: but I am disposed to think that, to one of their living representatives, these colonies are but little indebted. Still it is not impossible that the past may be in some measure redeemed, and Lord John Russell may live to do us yet essential service; and most assuredly the colonial past demands not a little at his hands.

A MIGRATORY CHARACTER.

We have a class of persons in Australia that seem to be the most enviable of mankind. Happiness in them appears to be a fixed and central principle, undisturbed by any breath of outward circumstances, without ebbs or flows, bounds or fluctuations. Only contemplate for a moment the situation of a person destitute of money, without a home, friend, or kindred, out of employment, moving about the world unshackled by any apparent connection with it; and there are such persons in this hemisphere who have been expelled from the other. I have known many such, but one particularly arrested my attention. How forlorn how utterly wretched we must fancy him! Pooh! he belongs to our class of imperturbably happy persons. Has he nerves? has he sensibility? If he has ? they occasion him no uneasiness.

For many a year he has done nothing that can be termed work. The quietness of his personal demeanour, the habitual placidity of his countenance, never forsake him. His short pipe is the constant companion of his wanderings; the soother or sweetener of his solitude it is not; for being happy in himself, he is ever at home; lonely he is not, needs no consolation. Ease is his natural element; the bush is his world; waking or sleeping, his breath is tranquillity. Of all the world's holiday vagabonds he is the prince. He one day condescended to pay us a visit, and I shall never forget it. A murmurous sound as of a bee came to us from a distance; a soft blue wreath of smoke revealed its whereabout, and a sauntering, listless-looking fellow emerged from among the old gum-trees into sight. Singing in a quiet under-tone he came right on towards the cottage, entered it, and without question or salutation took his seat by the fire. I eyed him for some time with a questioning look, but there was no answer on his lips or in his countenance. Looking at me steadfastly for a moment, he then

"Fell to such perusal of the place as he would draw it."

After a long silence he took his pipe from his mouth, and I turned my eyes full upon him, expecting now for a certainty he meant to declare his purpose. "He is dumb," said I to myself, as he looked still about him, carelessly refilled his pipe and resumed smoking. His extraordinary taciturnity and quite-at-homeness amused me not a little. I should earlier have asked him those blunt questions-"Who he was ?" and "What he wanted? Still as there was something new and mysterious in the guest, I passingly inquired "Whence he came?" "From the last station," was the ready reply. And "Where was he going?" "To the next," said he. He came from the last station, and was going to the next. Could anything be more natural, more independent? He observed that if food was set before him he ate it; or drink, he drank it; or tobacco, he smoked it. He would also have complied with St. Paul's command, asking no questions." A long silence ensued, during which time I naturally busied my mind with thoughts of the old knights errant-Sir Tristrem, Sir Gawain, and Launcelot du Lake, those redoubted lords of nature and necessity, who passed months and months in forests and deserts, eating only occasionally, and to whose existence regular meals were not absolutely necessary; for to that race of worthies our hero must belong, as he did not trouble himself to ask for anything. I felt quite lessened in my own good opinion by the reflection, that I must be so much of a

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human animal as of a necessity to take three meals a day-must pay a daily quit-rent of regular eating and drinking, or throw up the lease of life. I was dissatisfied with our best poets for giving us such arbitrary images of man's mortal condition. Crabbe, for instance, when he says of some one that

"He wanders now

Far as the dinners of the day allow."

Our guest-I did not presume to offer him anything—at length departed as he came, without ceremony and in silence, only traceable by the smoke of his pipe and the same happy murmurous under-song. "Where is he now?" I often ask myself. Wordsworth's "Stepping Westward" used to seem to me the very soul of free wandering, of unlimited progression; but since this novel visitation, that has been to me positive and circumscribed. This denizen of the Australian wild came from the last station, and was going to the next; east, west, north, or south, all were the same to him; he was not bound arbitrarily to any one point of the compass. He was free as a bird. If not quite so beautiful and pure a kind of existence as the lilies which "toiled not, neither did they spin," like them he toiled not. He entered freely the house of the settler, or the miam of the savage; both were alike to him, if there was a fire where to light his pipe. Perhaps after crossing the Goulburn, the Hume, and Murrambidgee, he is at Yass or Sydney; or stepping northward, may be looking into some sandy Šahara of the interior; or westward, may have glanced at Portland Bay, smiled upon Port Fairy, and having crossed the Glenelg and the Murray, is at Adelaide. There can be little doubt that he was the first, except the natives, to traverse that Australian paradise, miscalled Gipps' Land, which had for so long a time carefully wrapped itself from sheep-run-seeking observation, flanking itself with mountains, moating itself with marshes, and mistifying itself in scrubbs; yes, it must have revealed itself to our wanderer like some land of Arabian enchantment; but nobody thought of asking him of such land, and its discovery remained to be bruited through the world by Count Streleski. What a world of knowledge he must have of fine unlocated cattle and sheep-pastures! O, but what a find would some years-hunting settler have, could he but know what our endless-wend-away knows, and regards but as worthless knowledge! He would be able to fix himself like the own brother of Job or Abram, with flocks and herds, where the commissioner of crown-lands could never find himout of the way of fines, and licenses, and assessments. That

settler, how rich he would be! Alas! and all this knowledge must die with our hero! for like Byron, he has

"A most voiceless thought, sheathing it, as a sword."

Only think when he was in the mountains, poking about amongst the loose rocks, with his stick in idle mood, of the rich vein of gold-ore that gleamed upon him; and how he left it as Robinson Crusoe did the wedges of gold, as useless; and how he never once gave it a thought when he smoked a pipe with the old goldfinder* in Mount Disappointment; the poor old gold-not finder, but seeker, whose house is a hollow tree, who is clothed in the wild-animals' skins, lives on bandicoots and opossums, and endures all kinds of hardships, day and night poking and peeping about for gold-mines.

Die! I can scarcely persuade myself that he ever will. His easy self-complacency bears him unharmed past the spear of the savage, and must also parry the darts of death.

Death-the mere sight of our never-old must change his purpose. Nor indeed in the court of Time would they grant him an arrest. Time and he have dallied so pleasantly together, they have grown old friends and familiars; and indeed what crime could be alleged against him except the number of his years? On he goes with interminable progression ! Care and Pain move out of his way; Night wraps him in soothing darkness, and the Day showers sunbeams in his path!

O, for a portion of his spirit! for him the severest human countenance has no terrors; no reflections on the past or future trouble him; all situations and persons are to him alike agreeable. Unshackled by ceremony; untortured by the humiliating sense of impropriety; most natural of natural philosophers; happier Diogenes, with all Australia for a tub. Too happy person-I almost wish some native would murder him!

SHEEPISH SATISFACTION.

When our barque was anchored in George Town harbour, there came down the Tamar a smart brig, the Adelaide; and she dropped down her anchor a little way from us. The next day, it being bright and breezy, the people were out parading on the decks, enjoying themselves. Who,' ," I inquired of a Van Diemen's Land passenger well acquainted with the people of the

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* A real character.