You could hear the bugles from a British man-of-war, the Drake. It was a brilliant, warm, delicious day. I spent a whole day in the city of Sydney, exploring the stores, riding about aimlessly in the cars. I had luncheon at the Australian Hotel. The waiters were dressed as stewards, and, indeed, many of them are ex-stewards. I thought the food excellent. I visited two excellent bookstores. [Illustration: IN SYDNEY I FOUND THE MEN IN THE BOOKSTORES ABNORMALLY INTELLIGENT] When you go to a bookstore in London and ask for any book, you are told they haven’t got it. Here in Sydney I found the men in the stores abnormally intelligent. You could even get different kinds of books written by the same author, which is a difficult feat anywhere. Most booksellers think that if a man writes a book on, say, poultry, it is preposterous to ask for a work of his on political economy or step-dancing. And yet it happens that many writers write books on different subjects--Andrew Lang, for instance. We received the sad news of the death of Andrew Lang at Fremantle. Andrew Lang is an author who spent the large capital of his wit, his learning, his wide sympathies, royally and generously without stint; he was a master of English prose, and some of the best pieces of prose he ever wrote were flung into leaders in the “Daily News.” Those which were afterwards collected in a book called “Lost Leaders” make the most delightful reading. He wrote just as well and just as wittily on street noises or midsummer heat as on Homer, the Young Pretender, or Joan of Arc. He was profoundly unprovincial; he had a fine and rare quiet appreciation of French poetry; he could write ghost stories, fairy tales, doggerel; he was a supreme dialectician, an amusing parodist, a prince of letter writers, as well as a poet;--perhaps he was above all things a poet. The following translation of Rufinus’ verses to Rhodocleia, sending her a wreath, is a good example of his verse. He has turned an exquisite Greek poem into an exquisite English poem. “Ah, Golden Eyes, to win you yet, I bring mine April coronet. The lovely blossoms of the spring For you I weave, to you I bring These roses with the lilies set, The dewy dark-eyed violet, Narcissus, and the wind-flower wet: Wilt thou disdain mine offering? Ah, Golden Eyes! Crowned with thy lover’s flowers, forget The pride wherein thy heart is set, For thou, like these or anything, Hast but a moment of thy spring, Thy spring, and then--the long regret! Ah, Golden Eyes!”