I am told a good deal about Australia and the Australians by people who have been backwards and forwards. They agree to its being a splendid country, full of openings for the emigrant. “In Australia,” some one tells me, “people don’t ask you for references. If you ask for a job they give it you, and as long as you show you can do it, they let you do it, and as soon as you show signs of not being able to do it, they fire you out.” That is, indeed, a different system from what obtains in the mother country, where references are regarded with awe, and where a thousand small side issues often contribute not only to a square peg remaining in a round hole, but to an utterly hopeless peg remaining in any kind of hole. One also hears that the Australians (_a_) resent criticism on anything Australian; (_b_) are very critical of what they see in other countries. [Illustration: FROM SHIP’S MUSIC, AS A RULE, ONE CAN WITHDRAW ONE’S ATTENTION WITHOUT DIFFICULTY] What irritates the Australians, no doubt, and what justly irritates them, is when globe-trotters rush round the country in a few days and then write a book of critical impressions. In England (and in America, I should think) the people have got over being irritated by that particular form of literature. They don’t care. If a visitor, after spending a fortnight in England, writes a book called “The Rotten English,” or “Those Damned English,” or the “God-forsaken Country,” we don’t much care. And as for criticism, if it be well founded and well expressed, it will be certain to obtain a wide popularity in England. Witness Mr. Collier’s “England and the English.” Personally there is nothing I enjoy reading more than the critical impressions of my own country written by an intelligent foreigner. It opens the window on all sorts of shut-up points of view, and it calls one’s attention to what one had never noticed because it was too obvious; because we ourselves are in it. But the Australians appear to be sensitive to the criticism of the foreigner, even when it is just and well founded. My very slender experience has convinced me that they are often unduly critical with regard to the objects of interest in other countries. One day, on board, one of the Australians expressed disappointment and censure with regard to London architecture. I thought at first he meant the new public offices; but not at all; he meant Westminster Abbey, which compared unfavourably with the cathedral in Adelaide. I was inclined to think this critical point of view which was attributed to the colonials was perhaps imaginary, or in any case exaggerated. It certainly is exaggerated; it isn’t imaginary.