But I must confess that to me the spirit which has been shown on this occasion, so far from seeming contemptible, has appeared, on the whole, in the highest degree creditable. I have little hope of being able to bring over you or any of your readers to my way of thinking. Nevertheless, as Australia cannot answer for itself in less than three months, I will endeavour to put the case in the light in which it strikes me. We Englishmen at home are of all men most devoid of imagination. We spend our lives on soil teeming with tradition, where the very shape or colour of every brick and stone tells its story of the past, and may be a silent but ever-present reminder of some especially honoured friend or hero, some favourite struggle lost or won. But we do not know how much these associations are bound up with us; we cannot tell, till we try, how ill we can dispense with them. I do not believe we have the least idea of the fidelity with which Australians preserve old memories; how tenaciously they cling to their right of inheritance in the history of the past. At first it may be that an emigrant is altogether engrossed with the occupations of the moment. He must get his bread; he must strike his roots into the new soil; he has no time to sit down and think. But as he grows older, when he finally makes up his mind to make the new country his home, old memories and old attachments return with immense force. An old weather-beaten settler, who after a life spent in hardships at last sees his children growing up about him in prosperity and comfort, will look at them proudly, yet half sadly, knowing that he has within him an inheritance which he can transmit to them only in part, doubting whether after all a dinner of herbs amongst the old scenes and the old traditions, sustaining (so he fancies) the old beliefs, is not better than a stalled ox without them. No one who has not experienced Australian hospitality can imagine the jealous care which they take of a chance visitor from England, how distressed and almost angry a settler will be if a visitor, although an utter stranger, puts up at an inn instead of going to his house. And as you talk to him, the chances are he will speak sadly, even bitterly, of the carelessness, the indifference of people at home to their Australian Colonies. They do not know even by name one colony from another. Melbourne and Sydney are set down as places where a revolver is as necessary as an umbrella in London; their populations as composed mainly of convicts, runaways from Europe, dishonest demagogues, or merchants who care to remain only till they have made their fortunes. But what he will complain of most bitterly is that a school has grown up in England which says, ‘Let the Colonies go. All we want of them is wool and gold. All they want of us is a market. What we both want is wealth. We can get this as well separate as together, perhaps better. Traditions, loyalty to the throne, willingness to share danger as well