Morally and intellectually, at all events, the colonies are thriving. A literature is springing up, a national character is being grafted upon the good English stock. What shape the Australian mind will take is at present somewhat doubtful. In addition to considerable shrewdness and purely Saxon capacity and willingness to combine for local objects, we find in Australia an admirable love of simple mirth, and a serious distaste for prolonged labor in one direction, while the down-rightness and determination in the pursuit of truth, remarkable in America, are less noticeable here.
The extravagance begotten of the tradition of convict times has not been without effect, and the settlers waste annually, it is computed, food which would support in Europe a population of twice their numbers.
This wastefulness is perhaps, however, in some degree a consequence of the necessary habits of a pastoral people. The 8000 tons of tallow exported annually by the Australias are said to represent the boiling down of sheep enough to feed half a million of people for a twelvemonth.
Australian manners, like the American, resemble the French rather than the British—a resemblance traceable, perhaps, to the essential democracy of Australia, America, and France. One surface point which catches the eye in any Australian ball-room, or on any race-course, is clearly to be referred to the habit of mind produced by democracy—the fact, namely, that the women dress with great expense and care, the men with none whatever. This, as a rule, is true of Americans, Australians, and French.
Unlike as are the Australians to the British, there is nevertheless a singular mimicry of British forms and ceremonies in the colonies, which is extended to the most trifling details of public life. Twice in Australia was I invited to ministerial dinners, given to mark the approaching close of the session; twice also was I present at university celebrations, in which home whimsicalities were closely copied. The governors’ messages to the Colonial Parliaments are travesties of those which custom in England leads us to call “the Queen‘s.” The very phraseology is closely followed. We find Sir J. Manners Button gravely saying: “The representatives of the government of New South Wales and of my government have agreed to an arrangement on the border duties....” The “my” in a democratic country like Victoria strikes a stranger as pre-eminently incongruous, if not absurd.
The imitation of Cambridge forms by the University of Sydney is singularly close. One almost expects to see the familiar blue gown of the “bull-dog” thrown across the arm of the first college servant met within its precincts. Chancellor, Vice-chancellor, Senate, Syndicates, and even Proctors, all are here in the antipodes. Registrar, professors, “seniors,” fees, and “petitions with the University seal attached;” “Board of Classical Studies”—the whole corporation sits in borrowed plumage; the very names of the colleges are being imitated: we find already a St. John‘s. The Calendar reads like a parody on the volume issued every March by Messrs. Deighton. Rules upon matriculation, upon the granting of testamurs; prize-books stamped with college arms are named, ad eundem degrees are known, and we have imitations of phraseology even in the announcement of prizes to “the most distinguished candidates for honors in each of the aforesaid schools,” and in the list of subjects for the Moral Science tripos. Lent Term, Trinity Term, Michaelmas Term, take the place of the Spring, Summer, and Fall Terms of the less pretentious institutions in America, and the height of absurdity is reached in the regulations upon “academic costume,” and on the “respectful salutation” by undergraduates of the “fellows and professors” of the University. The situation on a hot-wind day of a member of the Senate, in “black silk gown, with hood of scarlet cloth edged with white fur, and lined with blue silk, black velvet trencher cap,” all in addition to his ordinary clothing, it is to be presumed, can be imagined only by those who know what hot winds are. We English are great acclimatizers: we have carried trial by jury to Bengal, tenant-right to Oude, and caps and gowns to be worn over loongee and paejama at Calcutta University. Who are we, that we should cry out against the French for “carrying France about with them everywhere”?
The objects of the founders are set forth in the charter as “the advancement of religion and morality, and the promotion of useful knowledge;” but as there is no theological faculty, no religious test or exercise whatever, the philosophy of the first portion of the phrase is not easily understood.
In no Western institutions is the radicalism of Western thought so thoroughly manifested as in the Universities; in no English colonial institutions is Conservatism so manifest. The contrast between Michigan and Sydney is far more striking than that between Harvard and old Cambridge.
Of the religious position of Australia there is little to be said: the Wesleyans, Catholics, and Presbyterians are stronger, and the other denominations weaker, than they are at home. The general mingling of incongruous objects and of conflicting races, characteristic of colonial life, extends to religious buildings. The graceful Wesleyan church, the Chinese joss-house, and the Catholic cathedral stand not far apart in Melbourne. In Australia, the mixture of blood is not yet great. In South Australia, where it is most complete, the Catholics and Wesleyans have great strength. Anglicanism is naturally strongest where the race is most exclusively British—in Tasmania and New South Wales.
As far as the coast tracts are concerned, Australia, as will be seen from what has been said of the individual colonies, is rapidly ceasing to be a land of great tenancies, and becoming a land of small freeholds, each cultivated by its owner. It need hardly be pointed out that, in the interests of the country and of the race, this is a happy change. When English rural laborers commence to fully realize the misery of their position, they will find not only America, but Australia also, open to them as a refuge and future home. Looming in the distance, we still, however, see the American problem of whether the Englishman can live out of England. Can he thrive except where mist and damp preserve the juices of his frame? He comes from the fogs of the Baltic shores, and from the Flemish lowlands; gains in vigor in the south island of New Zealand. In Australia and America—hot and dry—the type has already changed. Will it eventually disappear?