At the time of the Kelly trial practical demonstration of the latent sympathy with crime in Melbourne was afforded. Thousands of persons, headed by the Chairman of Committees of the House of Assembly, actually agitated for the reprieve of the most notorious, if not the greatest, criminal in the annals of Australia, a man whose murders were not to be counted on the fingers; and all this because for over two years he had set the police at defiance, and after a life of murder and rapine had, shown the courage of despair when his only choice was between being shot by a policeman or hung on the gallows. In many respects, as, I have elsewhere intimated, our free political system makes the social outlook here far more promising than in Europe; but larrikinism is a peculiar danger already well above the horizon, against which we seem powerless to deal. Some set it down to the absence of religious teaching in the State schools, but its real point and origin seems rather to lie in the absence of parental authority at home and the unpopularity of the old proverb: 'Spare the rod and spoil the child.' SOCIAL RELATIONS. My last letter was necessarily, from the nature of its subject, a little flaky--a charge to which all these notes must more or less plead guilty. Though the heading of this one differs slightly, it must practically be a continuation of the same subject. The first social relation, like charity, begins in the family circle, and was incidentally touched upon in my last. Between husband and wife the relations in Australia are, on the whole, probably as satisfactory as in any other part of the world. Both generally marry from love, and whatever may be the general effect of love-matches, it cannot be denied that more than any others they tend to promote pleasant relations between the 'two contracting parties,' as the French would call them. Amongst the wealthy, as everywhere else, there cannot of course be the close marital intimacy of the middle classes; but not only is infidelity less common than in London, but moreover, the proportion of the wealthy who keep up the style which produces the quasi-separation of domestic life is far smaller. Husband and wife have grown rich together; they have taken counsel together, and lived an open life, as far as each other are concerned, ever since they were married. Against this the usages of society, dressing-rooms and lady's-maids are of little avail. You may chase the second nature out by the door, but it jumps in again at the window.