infused amongst them. Society in Australia calls especially for the presence of an educated middle class, capable of ameliorating, by its example, the rudeness of character and manners which may be expected from amongst her successful gold-diggers, bush-farmers, and traders. The spread of truthful information respecting the climate, capabilities, &c., of the country, will effect much in supplying that want, and inducing such a class to emigrate thither as to a permanent home. The time may come—be it far distant!—when the colonists may demand to be an independent people. Such an infusion amongst them of right-hearted and loyal British men and women—the fathers and mothers of another generation—may do much to postpone such an event. And when it does arrive—when a people grown great and wealthy under the protecting arm of British sway refuses to be governed from the antipodes—the breaking of the link may be rendered a kindly one; and it may to no slight extent operate upon our future relations with the grown-up child, who has cast us off, and decided to walk by himself, that his heart still clings to the home of his parents, and feels an interest in maintaining the prosperity of the land which gave them birth. SPECULATORS AMONG THE STARS. PART I.[13] Let us imagine one of our species, at an early period of its history, destitute of any artificial aid to the sense of sight, contemplating the aspect of things around him. He perceives that, somehow or other, he lives upon a Something—apparently a flat surface, of indefinite extent in all directions from the spot where he stands—consisting of land and water, alternately visited with light and darkness, heat and cold; with a regular succession of seasons, somehow or other connected with the growth of vegetables of various kinds, suitable and unsuitable for his purposes, with beautiful flowers and magnificent forests: while the air, water, and earth, teem with insects, birds, fishes, and animals, which seem almost altogether at his command. There are also winds, dews, showers, mists, frost, snow, hail, thunderstorms, volcanoes, and earthquakes. He himself, equally with the vegetables and animals, passes through divers gradations, from birth to decay—from life to death: but during life, alike alternately sleeping and waking, subject to vicissitudes of pain and pleasure, of health and disease.