It all tends perhaps to the loss of individuality, but individuals are not needed in a new country; what is needed is one great family which will present as a whole an unbroken phalanx to the world. Exceptions, however brilliant, do but break the ranks; no one has time to bother with, or be bothered by them. One must keep step with the regiment, or one will be left behind to die of privation. Yet it is, on the whole, that very necessity for ever pushing onward, for hewing wood and drawing water to keep this marvellous new household going, that makes Melbourne such a cruelly hard place for the merely intellectual man or woman, the writer, the artist, the poet, the dreamer. Between the upper and nether millstone of the merchants, professional classes, and landowners, and the artisans, mechanics, and labourers, they are crushed so closely that their very existence is apt to remain unnoticed. It is no good blaming these people; it is not their fault; it is part of the rough, crude necessity of nation-building; we start by giving a naked man a shirt; there is no time to worry over people who offer to hemstitch frills for it, even gratis, while he is shivering. All this is why I say Melbourne is not cosmopolitan. Sydney, older and more settled in her ways, perhaps also more languid from the effects of her relaxing climate, is far more so, but in no city anywhere near its size have I heard foreign languages so little spoken as in Melbourne. The newcomer must learn to speak with the tongue of the people, not they with his; in more senses than one. They have no time for “frills,” and as the spirit of the strange country is usually stronger than the homesick spirit of the stranger within its gates, it is the stranger who gives way. That is if he be anything but Irish. Generally speaking, Australia can do little with the Irish; as some old proverb has it: “You can’t hang soft cheese from a hook on the wall.” The summit of the ambition of most Irish colonists is to attain to the dignity of keeping a public-house. There are exceptions, of course. I have in my mind’s eye, as I write, a family of whom the two brothers hold the highest position in Melbourne—but it is not often the case. There is a free and easy feeling about the life which appeals to Pat. He has few ideals; he is too easily contented, and inclined to let things slide. Sad to say, if he loses these faults he loses most of his virtues with them. The successful Irishman in Australia is for the most part something of a toady—hard, and mean, and shifty. I am half Irish myself, and I have the strongest affection for the people. When I first landed in Melbourne I caught eagerly at even the hint of a brogue, or Hibernian name; but only in the poor, the struggling, the unsuccessful, did I ever find the true spirit of Ireland.