It is possible that the secret of the superior energy of the Victorians may be, not in the fact that they are more American, but more English, than the New South Welsh. The leading Sydney people are mainly the sons or grandsons of original settlers, “cornstalks” reared in the semi-tropical climate of the coast; the Victorians are full-blooded English immigrants, bred in the more rugged climes of Tasmania, Canada, or Great Britain, and brought only in their maturity to live in the exhilarating air of Melbourne, the finest climate in the world for healthy men: Melbourne is hotter than Sydney, but its climate is never tropical. The squatters on the Queensland downs, mostly immigrants from England, show the same strong vitality that the Melbourne men possess; but their brother immigrants in Brisbane--the Queensland capital, where the afternoon languid breeze resembles that of Sydney--are as incapable of prolonged exertion as are the Sydney “cornstalks.” [Illustration: THE OLD AND THE NEW. BUSH SCENERY.] [Illustration: COLLINS STREET EAST, MELBOURNE.--P. 24.] Whatever may be the causes of the present triumph of Melbourne over Sydney, the inhabitants of the latter city are far from accepting it as likely to be permanent. They cannot but admit the present glory of what they call the “Mushroom City.” The magnificent pile of the new Post-office, the gigantic Treasury (which, when finished, will be larger than our own in London), the University, the Parliament-house, the Union and Melbourne Clubs, the City Hall, the Wool Exchange, the viaducts upon the government railroad lines,--all are Cyclopean in their architecture, all seem built as if to last forever; still, they say that there is a certain want of permanence about the prosperity of Victoria. When the gold discovery took place, in 1851, such trade sprang up that the imports of the colony jumped from one million to twenty-five millions sterling in three years; but, although she is now commencing to ship breadstuffs to Great Britain, exports and imports alike show a steady decrease. Considerably more than half of the hand-workers of the colony are still engaged in gold-mining, and nearly half the population is resident upon the gold fields; yet the yield shows, year by year, a continual decline. Had it not been for the discoveries in New Zealand, which have carried off the floating digger population, and for the wise discouragement by the democrats of the monopolization of the land, there would have been distress upon the gold fields during the last few years. The Victorian population is already nearly stationary, and the squatters call loudly for assisted immigration and free trade, but the stranger sees nothing to astonish him in the temporary stagnation that attends a decreasing gold production.