In the towns, then, you see bustling streets where electric tramways run out into roomy suburbs, and where motor-cars have already ceased to be a novelty. You notice that the towns are even better drained than paved, and that the water supply everywhere is as good as it ought to be in so well-watered a country. The visitor can send telegrams for sixpence and letters for a penny, and finds the State telephone system as convenient as it is cheap. If the hotels do not display American magnificence they do not charge American prices, for they give you comfort and civility for twelve-and-sixpence a day. Theatres and concert-halls are commodious, if not imposing; and, thanks to travelling companies and to famous artists passing through on their way to or from Australia, there is usually a good play to be seen or good music to be heard. Indeed, if there be an art which New Zealanders can be said to love, it is music. Their choral societies and glee clubs are many, and they have at least one choir much above the average. Nor are they indifferent to the sister art of painting, a foundation for which is laid in their State schools, where all children have to learn to draw. Good art schools have been founded in the larger towns, and in some of the smaller. Societies are buying and collecting pictures for their galleries. At the International Exhibition held in Christchurch in 1906-7 the fine display of British art, for which our people had to thank the English Government, was welcomed with the enthusiasm it deserved. The picture galleries were thronged from beginning to end of the Exhibition, and the many thousands of pounds spent in purchases gave material evidence of the capacity of New Zealanders to appreciate good art when they have the chance of seeing it. The same may be said of literature. To say that they all love books would be absurd; but of what nation can that be said? What can truly be affirmed is that all of them read newspapers; that most of them read books of some sort; and that all their books are not novels. Booksellers tell you that the demand for cheap editions of well-known authors is astonishing in so small a population. They try to write books, too, and do not always fail; and a small anthology--it would have to be very slender--might be filled with genuine New Zealand poetry. Domett’s reputation is established. Arthur Adams, Arnold Wall, and Miss Mackay, when at their best, are poets, and good poets.