But once land and enter the town itself, and all pleasing prospects and illusions vanish at once. Never was a city less worthy of its situation. The principal street is nearly two miles long. For the greater part of the way this street is more or less in a hollow, and from hardly any part of it is the harbour visible. The rest of the city straggles right and left of it, covering with its suburbs a very large extent of ground. Only one good street, Macquarie Street, is finely situated. There are two really fine buildings, superior to anything of the kind in Melbourne, the new Cathedral, and the Hall of the University. A few public buildings and some of the banks are solidly, if not gracefully, built. But in general the houses are small, ugly, ill drained, ill built, and in bad repair, and the greater part of the town a poor specimen of the mean style of house architecture prevailing in England forty or fifty years ago. It is but seldom that any attempt has been made to make the plans of houses such as to suit the requirements of the climate, as has been done so successfully at Melbourne. Deep verandahs, which add so much to the appearance of a building by producing contrasts of light and shade, and which are so essential to comfort in a hot, glaring climate, are the exception rather than the rule. People who can afford to be comfortable and luxurious live out of town now, and so what is perhaps the best part of Sydney has been preserved almost unaltered from the Governor-Macquarie era of half a century ago.