Great gum-tree stumps were grievously prevalent, alike in Melbourne streets and allotments. Swanston-street was special in this way, and they long flourished upon allotments about where the city hall at first stood. One huge stump, just touching the Collins-street line where the Criterion Hotel was afterwards built, long held defiant existence, the wooden building of the time having deviated to go round it. When at length the lot came to be sold by Mr. James Purves, a well-known early allotment-monger, whom I recollect on this occasion descanting on the future prospects of so central a site, the buyer had the too long-endured enemy attacked and extirpated. THE MELBOURNE CORPORATION, 1842. "When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy winter's field." --Shakespeare, Sonnet 2. The corporation arose towards the end of 1842, and then the anti-stump warfare began. My friend Henry Condell, like so many other early birds a Tasmanian (a Vandemonian was the ill-omened name at that time), was the first mayor. The times were bad, and the shilling rating caused a growl, but the new body held its way. John Charles King, an Ulster man, and of good abilities, was the first town clerk. His successor, William Kerr, had greater abilities, but not equal method and activity. Both were strong Orangemen--a feeling, however, for which this colonial ground was not favourable. The bane and bottomless deep for the corporation's narrow budget was Elizabeth-street, where a little "casual" called "The Williams," of a mile's length, from the hardly perceptible hollows of the present Royal Park, played sad havoc at times with the unmade street. It had scooped out a course throughout, almost warranting the title of a gully, and at Townend's corner we needed a good long plank by way of a bridge. At the upper end of the street was a nest of deep channels which damaged daily for years the springs and vehicles of the citizens. The more knowing of us who lived northwards dodged these evils by a particular roundabout via Swanston-street. Up almost to gold diggings and Victorian Parliaments did the great Sydney-road begin thus inauspiciously, and hardly less pertinaciously disconcerting was the Brunswick swamp, three miles further on. Melbourne missed a great chance in filling up with a street this troublesome, and, as a street, unhealthy hollow. Dr. Howitt used to tell me he never could cure a patient, resident there, who had become seriously unwell. A reservation of the natural grass and gum-trees between Queen and Swanston streets would have redeemed Melbourne up to the first rank of urban scenic effect, and the riotous Williams might, with entire usefulness, have subsided into a succession of ornamental lakes and fish ponds. EARLY SUBURBAN MELBOURNE. "Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness." --Cowper. "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife." -Gray.