We went over the houses afterwards, which are small and inconvenient, and built of wood; but they are about to erect new ones.
Then to luncheon with Sir Alfred and Lady Stephen, who presently drove us out to see the Alfred Hospital. The foundation-stone was laid by the Duke of Edinburgh, after whom it is named, and the handsome stone building cost 120,000l. All the appointments of the hospital are excellent. The house surgeon begged to be excused from taking us over as he had seven operations to perform that afternoon, and sent for Mrs. Murray, the matron, a charming woman, to do so instead. Near the Alfred Hospital is the University, the first that was founded in the southern hemisphere, and around are the affiliated colleges of St. Paul and St. Andrew, belonging to the Church of England and the Presbyterian body, where religious instruction is given, none being allowed at the University.
Sir Alfred Stephen is Lieutenant-Governor, and the late Chief Justice. Aged eighty-two, he has had eighteen children, to whom the number of nine has been always attached; so curious is the coincidence, that I append some lines written by himself "in court in 1859, during a very long speech by counsel in the trial of a squatting action, which had lasted four days":—
"'Twice Nine;' Or, Judicial Impartiality Exemplified.
"Of children this knight had no less than eighteen;
Twice nine little heads, with a marriage between.
He had nine when a barrister, nine when a judge;
And of 'sex'—since to Nature he owed not a grudge—
Nine exactly were girls, the other half boys,