ments of a ship's cargo of emigrants: in fact, the fortunes of all those who went with us in search of the golden fleece! Britain has dependencies, children more than twelve thousand miles off, for whom the home-kindness sends out occasional suits of comfortable clothing: yet which unfortunately, constructed without accurate knowledge of the size of the persons, do not fit. Then only think of the uncomfortableness and destitution endured whilst vast voyages are performing to and fro: that often twelve months must elapse before any inaccuracy can be rectified; and of the consequent colds, fevers, ague-fits and convulsions which take place. Such is the situation of our Australian dependencies. The Special Survey System constructed for Port Phillip, and the Uniform Price System, were suits which did not fit, and were ordered to be hung on a peg-or laid aside in the colonial government wardrobe. The Convict Assignment System`did not fit: the Probation suit was to supersede it, but it did not fit; and once more the Convict Assignment System, turned, altered, and newly trimmed, is worn, restlessly and with abundant anathemas, by Van Diemen. Adelaide, Britain's fair Australian daughter, had a fever-and the cure cost us 150,000l. Other and as deadly injuries have been inflicted on Australia, by Whited Sepulchre Emigration Books. I allude to such as the Twenty Years' Experience of Australia :" "Australia Felix" by a former editor of the Port Phillip Gazette, and numberless others. In many instances these cheap delusions—some of them to be had for sixpence—have cost the purchasers 20,0007. How many people, alas, totally unfit for the task which they undertook! have returned, ruined by such delusions, and have spread widely through society a false idea of the land; whilst many others, unable to return at all, have in their letters done it a like injustice. But as it regards my own book Walter Savage Landor has said, that "labour brutifies ;" and it may follow, if I have not laboured excessively, that the weight of the axe and the plough have possibly imparted a little of their heaviness to my pen. The holiday-writer, more of a looker-on than a worker, has here the advantage of me. I know it is not well to remain too long on the outskirts of civilisation, in the valleys and on the plains. That there is a purer atmosphere on the higher grounds in the bracing air more amplitude of intelligence: a more energetic character of healthfulness for body and mind. Nevertheless the age is an active one, is a worker, and may sympathise with me. Had I been more of an artificial being, more social than solitary, the reader had found in this book more of hostelries and coteries, but less of that out-of-door companionship of nature which moulded my tastes at home, and has attended me abroad. In this there may most probably have been both loss and gain. Moreover, truth is unaccommodating a stately walker on highways-not permitting any of that wandering in by-pathsnone of that erratic divergence so natural to travellers, and so especially refreshing to poets, ever ready to luxuriate themselves in open spaces, and green fields: "in fresh fields and pastures new." Fiction, like the pope, is more liberal of her indulgences: any exaggeration is by her permitted for effect. Hers is the whole wealth of light and shade-the fine free hand, and the masterly touch. The hard outline softens before her; the formal relaxes; and over the most disagreeable objects hangs her veil, how gracefully! Her satire, and sprightly sallies of malice, are irresistible. Alas for truth, the awful-the reverence-exactingand for me. In conclusion, I must present my thankful acknowledgments to G. A. Gilbert, Esq., of Melbourne, for the original picture of the Dance of the Port Phillip Natives, whence the lithograph at the commencement of this volume is taken. Nottingham, February 21, 1845. |