A busy time of public entertainments followed, during the intervals of which I visited energetically persons and places of old association. The Melbourne suburbs were quite as surprising as the city itself. Almost countless miles of streets had taken the place of the country roads or mere bush tracks of my recollection. While I stood wondering at these changes, I had to regret that the old features had so completely disappeared that I was at home nowhere, save that in an otherwise entirely unrecognizable area there would still appear the old name, such as the Sydney, the Richmond, or the Toorak Road. I had to be content with this scant remnant of the past, and to begin acquaintance with an entirely new set of occupant streets and dwellings.
OLD FRIENDS AND OLD TIMES.
Then I turned to the old and early friends of the past. Some of them kindly called; others, less able, I had myself to seek out. Thus I met, besides Mr. J.S. Johnston, already mentioned, Mr. J.A. Marsden, Mr. Alfred Woolley, Mr. E.B. Wight, Mr. Damyon, Mr. Brahe, Mr. John Barker, Mr. R.W. Shadforth, the Messrs. Ham, and Dr. Black. Mr. Germain Nicholson, another old and worthy friend, was in Sydney, where he called for us, but we have not yet met. I found time to reach Sir William Stawell at his pleasant suburban residence at Kew, and was most agreeably disappointed to find the veteran head of the law very much more like his former self than report had accredited him. Another old friend, Sir Francis Murphy, I have as yet failed to meet, and also Mr. David Moore. Mr. Francis Henty drove us to the St. Kilda-road to pay our respects to Mrs. Edward Henty, who pleasantly surprised us with as yet hardly the marks of age, and as though fully intending to see at least one generation more of the progress of the great colony which her departed husband had founded. Mrs. D.C. McArthur was still residing at Heidelberg along with her nieces, Miss Wright and Mrs. Were, the widow of my late old and intimate friend, Mr. J.B. Were. I saluted the former as the venerable mother of Melbourne society, and being thus one of her sons I claimed and exacted the full salutation of sonship. I claimed the same privilege from my other dear old friend, Mrs. A.M. McCrae, whom I found hardly changed, in vigour of mind at least, although now eighty-five years of age. Almost next door was Mrs. Henry Creswick, daughter of my old friend Dr. Thomson, of Geelong, of whom, as one of the very earliest, and only a few months behind Batman himself, I have already spoken. We enjoyed a chat over the very oldest Victorian times.
THE BENEVOLENT ASYLUM.
I had one opportunity of taking "old friends and fellow-colonists" in a wholesale fashion. The committee of the Benevolent Asylum complimented me by so pressing an invitation to visit an institution which I remembered and was interested in from its first commencement, that it was imperative on me to find the time to do so. The spectacle was alike most edifying and most interesting. The institution had enormously extended since my time, both in its accommodation and the number of its inmates. There were nearly 700 men and women, all of them helpless and destitute, and nearly all passed into old age. Some who were paralyzed in their lower limbs, and unable to move about, were put out in a sheltered place in the sunshine, to busy themselves in various ways of their own choosing, and we particularly noted two rather pretty young women, whose lively expression of face indicated no lack of happiness, and whose neat and nimble fingers turned out quantities of daily work. There was a considerable section of the blind, who were systematically treated, and had a library of their own. In one of the rooms were two dying men, one already past consciousness, the other still observant and even lively, but not expected to survive the night. Amongst so many and such aged people this sight was too familiar to greatly disturb the others. One of these was understood to be related to an English nobleman, and had passed through much adversity of colonial life. His face was still singularly indicative of the gentleman. Such cases are by no means rare in Australian experience.
Our inspection was completed by a view of the kitchen and larder, and the interesting spectacle of about 300 of the men engaged together under one roof at dinner, every one of whom revelled in solid beef to his heart's content. Included in their number were twelve Chinamen, who seemed as comfortably at home as any of the others, and whose presence, perhaps, helped to impress a Chinese Commissioner, who had lately visited the Asylum, and who had left his record in the visitors' book to the effect that such an institution was an honour to mankind.
THE OLD MELBOURNE CEMETERY.
The old Flagstaff Hill and the old cemetery were two objects which I sought for on the earliest opportunity, and as the business day-time was so full of work, I took the early morning. The Flagstaff Hill I had soon to give up as quite unrecognizable under new plantations and roadways, but the cemetery, in its close vicinity, was much as I had left it, and there the old friends, albeit voiceless now, cropped up at every turn. Let me select a few, commenting as I go along, and beginning with the earliest in date.
1841.
A series of the well-known early family of the Langhornes, some of whose members I often met. Let me begin with "The wife of William Langhorne," who died in this far back year, and end with Alfred, who used to amuse us all with interminable stories, who had a strikingly beautiful wife, and who died in 1874.