Of Melbourne, Victoria, mention has already been made. There are many cities with larger populations, but few have ever attained so great a size with such rapidity. Though it owes nothing to natural surroundings, “the internal appearance of the city is,” Mr. Trollope assures us, “certainly magnificent.” It is built on the Philadelphian rectangular plan; it is the width of the streets which give the city a fine appearance, together with the devotion of large spaces within the limits for public gardens. “One cannot walk about Melbourne without being struck by all that has been done for the welfare of the people generally. There is no squalor to be seen—though there are quarters of the town in which the people no doubt are squalid.... But he who would see such misery in Melbourne must search for it specially.” There are no workhouses; their place is supplied in the colony of Victoria generally by “Benevolent Asylums.” In Melbourne about 12,000 poor are relieved yearly, some using the institution there as a temporary, and others as a permanent place of refuge. These places are chiefly, but not entirely, supported by Government aid. “Could a pauper,” says Trollope, “be suddenly removed out of an English union workhouse into the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum, he might probably think that he had migrated to Buckingham Palace,” so well are the inmates fed and cared for. There are no workhouses proper in any part of Australia, and the charity bestowed on these asylums is not given painfully or sparingly. The wideness of the streets, however, and grandeur of general dimensions, have their drawbacks, among which the time consumed in reaching distant parts of the city counts first. Melbourne has a fine and entirely free Public Library and a University, as, indeed, has Sydney. Melbourne is the centre of a system of railways, and the well‐to‐do people all live out of town; in the south and east of the city there are miles of villas and mansions.