"At the conclusion of the cheering His Excellency said, 'Ladies and Gentlemen, Inhabitants of Victoria, I need not tell you that the sounds which are still reverberating are the echoes of what may be well termed a national honour to the illustrious dead. To make that honour as complete and perfect as we can, you have assembled in the vast numbers which meet the eye in every direction, and I accepted the position which I now occupy in the appointed ceremonial. On the 20th of August 1860 a gallant company, now known to all posterity as the "Burke and Wills Exploring Expedition," set forth, amidst the enthusiastic cheers of assembled thousands of their fellow-colonists, to win their way from the southern to the northern shore of the Australian continent. (Cheers.) A year had nearly passed away when the fact was entertained beyond a doubt that the victory had been nobly won, but that the leaders, in the exhausting struggle, had fallen almost in the hour of triumph. In the manner of their deaths, it seems to me that the distinguishing characteristics of each were strikingly illustrated. The calm and philosophic Wills begins his last letter to his father in these words--"These are probably the last lines you will ever get from me; we are on the point of starvation, not so much from the absolute want of food, but from the want of nutriment in what we get;" and he concludes it with the tranquilly-expressed opinion and assurance, "I think to live about four or five days; my spirits are excellent." Two days later, probably but a few hours before his death, the last words recorded in his journal are literally a scientific dissertation upon the nutritious nature of the food--the nardoo plant--by means of which they had for some time protracted their existence. "Place," said the expiring Burke, instinctively recurring to his early military days, and, as I doubt not, with the picture of a fallen warrior upon the battle-field vivid in his imagination, "place my weapon in my hand, and leave me unburied as I lie." Such was the fate of the men whom this day we mourn and honour. Then came the universal sorrow, the public funeral, the national provision for the living, and, lastly, this monument in memory of the dead. It cannot be said with truth that the people of Victoria have raised this monument in any boasting or vain-glorious spirit. It had its origin in a far more noble source. It is designed as the imperishable record of a deed which, not only on account of its intrinsic importance, but also of the high qualities which it developed in those who have achieved it, is justly believed to be worthy of high honour in the present generation and of future generations. (Cheers.) When, hereafter, shall be narrated the history of the sorrowful, yet successful adventure which this statue is intended to commemorate, it will be forgotten, or remembered only with regret, that there was once cavil and contention whether a sounder judgment, or--as men who have learned to