Melbourne Gleanings—Dr. Bevan—Night at a Bungalow—Cole’s Book-shop—A Day at Sorrento—White Cruelty to the Aborigines—Coffee Palaces—Dr. Strong—The Presbyterian Church in Collins Street—The Late Peter Lalor—Ballarat—Romance of Gold Mining—Sydney and Melbourne compared—Australian Rogues—Suburban Melbourne—Victorian M.P.’s—Victorian Politics.
The stranger who makes his first trip to Australia is not a little astonished by the extreme cold which greets him as he nears his destination. You hear so much of Australian heat that you are not a little astonished to find the nearer you get to your journey’s end the colder it becomes. In the tropics we had all given up warm clothing, but as we reached Western Australia great-coats by day and blankets by night came into fashion. People were wrapped up as if we were on the coast of England rather than of Australia, and as to sleeping with the ports open, that was quite out of the question. This is an admirable provision of Nature. It gives us the advantage of having the body braced up before it encounters the formidable heat which, according to all accounts, awaits us on shore. Another thing that strikes a stranger, as he studies the papers from all parts of the country, is the extraordinary difference in the weather as recorded in different localities. For instance, I find at Sydney the weather is described as delightfully cool, while at Adelaide on the same day it is recorded as the hottest of the season. In one district I read how the rain has come down in a perfect deluge, whilst in another men and vegetables are dying from the want of water. At a town in Queensland, the heat is so intense that many are dying daily of sunstrokes, and the insurance agents have been telegraphed to not to effect any more insurances, whilst in another locality I read of a heavy fall of snow. The fact is, it is impossible to realize the size of the Australian continent, twenty-six times larger than Great Britain and Ireland, or the various kinds of weather to be met with, till you are on the continent itself.
A pleasant trip of a day and a half from Adelaide, most of which time was passed in sight of land, enabled us to reach Melbourne—marvellous Melbourne, as it has been called—in time to go on board the Lusitania and bid good-bye to Miss von Finkelstein, who is, she tells me, wonderfully delighted with her Australian trip, and intends returning again. She goes now as far as Port Said, and thence she makes her way to Jerusalem. I then get into the train, and after a run of half an hour along a flat district, partly waste and partly built over with little wooden villas—prettily painted, each with its tiny garden, which seemed to me to have a wonderful knack of getting burnt down every night—find myself landed in the noble thoroughfare, which seems to me to run from one end of the city to the other, known as Collins Street; and almost the first person I meet—at any rate, the first one I recognise—is Dr. Hannay, who is leaving by the next mail steamer, and who is looking very well, though he tells me he has been much tried by the great heat of the last fortnight. The dust and the sun are trying, and I get back to the ship for dinner.
When next I go on shore it is Sunday morning, and a grateful breeze awaits me as I make my way along picturesque and stately Collins Street—a street which would be an ornament to London itself. The public-houses are closed, the tramcars have ceased running, and the busy crowds that block up the footways on the week-day are away. Instead of them there are the church-goers—well-dressed, sedate, orderly—just as we may see anywhere in England on the Sabbath. And if I miss the sound of the church-going bell, I know not that that is an unmitigated loss—indeed, as far as London is concerned in that respect, it always seems to me that we may have too much of a good thing. On my left I pass a handsome Baptist Church, which was crammed to suffocation when a short time since Rev. Dr. Maclaren, of Manchester, was preaching. Further on I pass the fine Scots Church, and on the other side of the crossing is the noble church of which Dr. Bevan is the popular pastor, and where I tarry to admire the cool and spacious structure, the appearance of the people, and the eloquence of the preacher. It is the premier church of Victoria, and is in every way worthy of its position. The people rejoice in an endowment of £3,700 a year, all of which is turned to good purposes, and they give at the doors as much as £1,500 a year, to say nothing of pew rents. It is not in Victoria that you feel doubts as to the power of the Churches to evangelize the land. Here, as all over the colonies, the Church of England leads the way, and—as was to be expected when you remember what an adventurous race of men the Scotch are—the Presbyterians occupy the second place. The Wesleyans and the Congregationalists come next, and of the latter body Dr. Bevan is the leader, and he seems to me to enjoy his position to the utmost. He is the picture of health and happiness, and, as I tell him, is to be likened rather to a wealthy archdeacon at home than to a Congregational minister, as we know him, in a country where he has to take—thanks to Parliamentary wisdom—rather a place in the second rank. He and Mrs. Bevan alike seem to have renewed their youth in this far-off land. A dealer in portraits of English celebrities, by-the-bye, tells me that people often ask him if the portrait of John Bright he displays is not that of the worthy Doctor. And, indeed, there is a breadth and vigour in the Doctor’s sermons which naturally suggests to the hearer the fiery eloquence of John Bright. Standing in his gown, on his platform pulpit, the Doctor certainly carries all before him. His audience seems to be wielded at his will, and his audience is a noble one; men and women to whom the service of the sanctuary is not a form or conventional observance or symbol of respectability, but a joy and delight, which reminds one of what church-going was, in what to sceptical and scientific London seems a far-off time, when Dr. Watts could write:
At once they sing, at once they pray,
They hear of heaven and learn the way.
What strikes me as a contrast to congregations I know nearer home is the power of the audience. The people are in the prime of life, not decayed and elderly, and the proportion of young men is great. In the evening they make a grand show in the gallery—semi-circular, lofty, and airy. And this is, remember, the summer season, when families rush off to the seaside, and corresponds to the period when in London our churches are thin, and when in New York and Washington, and the other great centres of American life and energy, it is usual for the pastor to shut up his church, and for the people to give themselves a Sunday rest—not in the Jewish, but in the modern acceptation of that term. In the afternoon I enjoyed the hospitality of one of the Doctor’s deacons, Mr. Johnson, who has had the honour of making his handsome house the temporary residence of Mr. Henry Lee, who is away preaching.
In every direction I look I see capacious streets with handsome houses, all painted white, and broad streets which are lined for miles with the dwellings of the Melbournites, while as you wander in wonder, every now and then, beyond the glitter of the white houses, and the green foliage of the public gardens, you see a thin silver streak of the blue bay. In the evening, the Doctor will have me go home with him. We stop late, for there are people waiting to see the Doctor in his private vestry; then we catch the last tram to Camberwell—how funny the old name seems to us on this Australian soil! Then we are driven home by the Doctor’s Jehu—who, I fancy, has rather a good time of it, though, as a Roman Catholic, he holds his master to be a heretic—and we have a welcome supper in a veritable bungalow, large, and occupying its own grounds of thirty acres, devoted by the Doctor to farming, on an interesting, but, I fear, rather unprofitable, scale. At an early hour on Monday morning—for we have much to talk of over our cigars, uncommonly fine ones, a present to the Doctor—I am offered a choice of beds, of course all on the ground-floor. I resolved to sleep in the one which has recently been tenanted by Dr. Hannay, of whom everyone in Melbourne speaks well. As the Doctor shows me to my bed and shuts down the window, I am idiot enough to say, ‘Any snakes about here, Doctor?’ ‘Only a few black ones now and then,’ he replies, in a light and airy way. But, alas! the Doctor’s words kept me uncommonly wide awake that night.
One of the sights of Melbourne, the most marvellous I have yet seen, is that known as ‘Cole’s Book Arcade,’ in Bourke Street, which is not merely a place for the dissemination of knowledge, useful or otherwise, but a reading-room as well, into which thousands enter, pick up a book, take a seat, and read as long as they like without spending a farthing. Mr. Cole himself, the owner, is a remarkable man. He hails from Ashford, in Kent, and had been some time in the colony trying to make a fortune, but with little success, and now evidently he has, to borrow an Americanism, ‘struck ile.’ As a compiler he has done some good work. His aim is to publish the Library of the Future, to be composed entirely of the cream of human thought and knowledge. To this scheme he gives the title of ‘The Federation of the World’s Library.’ It is to consist of one hundred of the best books in the world; one book, the best of its kind, is to be on astronomy, another on geology, another on geography, and so on. Each book is to be complete of its kind, and highly condensed. It is easily and perfectly done, he says. A moderate-sized song-book, he tells us, holds all the best songs in the world; a moderate-sized wisdom-book—it is a humiliating reflection—will hold all the wisest sayings in the world; a moderate-sized book, carefully prepared, of astronomy, geology, chemistry, botany, or any of the sciences, will give a clear knowledge of the principles of each. Such a library, of 100 volumes of 600 pages each, can be produced to sell at £10, thus bringing all the most important knowledge and all the most beautiful thoughts within the reach of every human being. He calculates that there are a million printed poems in the world. The 1,000 best are worth the remaining 999,000 all put together. Probably out of the 1,000 best there are 100 first-class, 300 second-class, and 600 third-class. Amongst the first-class Mr. Cole reckons Gray’s ‘Elegy,’ Goldsmith’s ‘Deserted Village,’ and Longfellow’s ‘Psalm of Life.’ As a bookseller he asserts—and I am sorry to write it—that it is read more, verse for verse, than the whole of Milton’s and Homer’s poems put together. Mr. Cole tells me that, with the exception of school books—always in demand—his principal sales are novels and theological works. Of the latter he sells most of Talmage. Ward Beecher does not go down so well. Perhaps the Australians in this respect resemble some of the members of the Christian Young Men’s Association. When last in London, Mr. Cole went to hear the great American lecture at Exeter Hall. ‘Mr. Beecher ought not to be allowed to lecture here,’ said someone to him. ‘Why so?’ asked Mr. Cole. ‘Because he is an infidel,’ was the charitable reply.
And what a sight Mr. Cole’s shop is, to be sure! especially at business hours, when it swarms with buyers and readers. It is three stories high, 200 feet deep, and 40 feet wide. Its walks are a third of a mile long, and its capacious galleries are supported by 140 brass pillars. The sign of the establishment is the rainbow, which is to be seen painted everywhere. A gorgeous rainbow ornaments the chief entrance in Bourke Street. Inside daily may be seen hundreds of men, women, and children, who really seem more numerous than they are in consequence of the seventy mirrors with which the interior is decorated. There are twenty miles of boards in the shelving, and 2,800 large cedar drawers. Altogether there are 100,000 sorts of books, all well classified, so that the purchaser can at once secure what he requires, and if he wants a selection he has probably a million of books to choose from. New books, music, and stationery occupy the ground-floor, second-hand books the next floor, and on the top floor is a fine collection of china, glass, and other house ornaments and knick-knacks. This flat is entirely devoted to the sale of goods to beautify the interiors of houses, as books beautify the mental interiors of their readers. If you want to get to the top, and you are too tired and weary to walk, there is a handsomely-decorated lift at your service, and if you require the solace of music there are free performances given every afternoon and evening. Mr. Cole, to his credit be it said, has prohibited, as far as he is concerned, the sale of Zola’s novels, having struck them out of his list. I asked one of his employés to what religious body he belonged. I was amused with this reply: ‘I don’t know; but he’s a very good man. I expect he is a Dissenter.’ It is curious to find people who do not go to Episcopalian churches spoken of as Dissenters in a land where there is no State Church, and where all denominations are on an equality; but then this particular young man had only left the Old Country a year and a half, and had not got rid of his Old World ideas. As an illustration of the value of property in Melbourne, Mr. Cole tells me that his rent is £1,000 a year, that he has a lease of it for fifteen years, and that the proprietor nevertheless had had an offer made him for the place of £5,000 a year. All round Mr. Cole’s premises are what he calls intellect sharpeners, in the shape of extracts from what wise men have written in favour of study and reading. This Australian Cole seems in his way to do much to advance Australia.
One of the few places in Australia to which interesting associations attach is Sorrento, and it is one of the places most patronised by the Melbourne public. You leave Melbourne Port at half-past eleven, and you arrive there at two. As the steamer returns at half-past three, you have not much time for exploration, and in my own case I admit that time was curtailed from perfectly natural causes. As I landed, the announcement ‘hot dinners’ met my eye, and gave me quite an appetite. I walked up the cliff, found a comfortable and airy hotel at the top, and did justice to a good half-crown dinner. Nor was I singular. I found many of my travelling companions similarly disposed. One must dine, and you may as well dine in comfort as not.