There is nothing in the state of the Victorian schools to show what will be the type of the next generation, but there are many reasons for believing that the present disorganization of colonial society will only cease with the attainment of complete democracy or absolute equality of conditions, which must be produced by the already completely democratic institutions in little more than a generation. The squatter class will disappear as agriculture drives sheep-farming from the field, and, on the other hand, the town democracy will adopt a tone of manly independence instead of one of brag and bluster, when education makes them that which at present they are not--the equals of the wealthy farmers. It has been justly pointed out that one of the worst dangers of democracy is the crushing influence of public opinion upon individuality, and many who have written upon America have assumed that the tendency has already manifested itself there. I had during my stay in the United States arrived at the contrary opinion, and come to believe that in no country in the world is eccentricity, moral and religious, so ripe as in America, in no country individuality more strong; but, ascribing to intermixture of foreign blood this apparently abnormal departure from the assumed democratic shape of society, I looked forward to the prospect of seeing the overwhelming force of the opinion of the majority exhibited in all its hideousness in the democratic colonies. I was as far from discovering the monster as I had been in America, for I soon found that, although there may be little intellectual unrest in Australia, there is marvelous variety of manners. There is in our colonies no trace of that multiplication of creeds which characterizes America, and which is said to be everywhere the result of the abolition of Establishments. In Victoria, eighty per cent. of the whites belong to either Episcopalians, Catholics, or Presbyterians, and almost all of the remainder to the well-known English Churches; nothing is heard of such sects as the hundreds that have sprung up in New England--Hopkinsians, Universalists, Osgoodites, Rogerenes, Come-Outers, Non-Resistants, and the like. The Australian democrat likes to pray as his father prayed before him, and is strongly conservative in his ecclesiastical affairs. It may be the absence in Australia of enthusiastic religion which accounts for the want among the country-folk of the peculiar gentleness of manner which distinguishes the farmer in America. Climate may have its effect upon the voice; the influence of the Puritan and Quaker in the early history of the thirteen States, when manners were moulded and the national life shaped for good or harm, may have permanently affected the descendants of the early settlers; but everywhere in America I noticed that the most perfect dignity and repose of manner was found in districts where the passionate religious systems had their strongest hold.