The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-04-03 00:00:00

Under the head of " First Impressions of Melbourne,"
The Times has published a most interesting letter from its
Special Correspondent there, from which we make the fol-
lowing extracts :

. . . . It is positively bewildering—almost enough to
make one's head turn—to walk among the fine streets and
handsome public buildings of Melbourne, getting
from various vantage-points a good view of its
well-laid, well-covered extent, and then to reflect
that the gentleman you have just passed, who con-
siders himself still in the prime of life, might in his
boyhood have gone over all the same ground with-
out the slightest risk of tumbling over a fragment of
mortar or brick. He might have been bogged
in a swamp, or lost in the bush, or been boomeranged
by an aboriginal; but his risk of coming to grief over
a kerbstone or a slippery pavement on the site of this
now crowded aria flthirishing city was then absolutely
net. . . . As for the shops, their number and variety
warrant the belief that there is nothing the traveller
cannot get here, from the recent luxurious edition of
Tha,ckeray's works to a second-hand coffin, though
Protection might make even the latter a needlessly ex-
pensive luxury. So much for the creature comforts of
Melbourne. . • •
It not unfrequently happens that people who have
made a fortune here, and have left the country in
order to live in England, are obliged to return because,
after the Australian, they cannot stand the English
climate. I have been here in what is considered the
worst time of the Melbourne year, the summer which
synchronizes with your winter. Loyal colonists—the
epithet is almost superfluous, since the colonists, as
a rule, are intensely loyal—display their devotion to
the good old customs of the mother country by
attacking roast beef, plum pudding, and mince pies
with the thermometer, it may be, over 100 deg.
in the shade. The strong point, so to speak, of
the Melbourne summer—the bugbear which strikes
terror into the stoutest heart—is the hot wind
sweeping before it fiery pillars of dust. I had heard
this wind spoken of as if the "fell simoom of the
desert" were a refreshing breeze compared with it,
until at last the mere fascination of fright made me
long to have some experience of it; to at least watch
through a double window its deadly effects on other
people. A hot wind came at last—by general admis-
sion one of the worst of its kind, and I. was agreeably
surprised to find it notWng compared with the heat
which I had often fell in India. Against the
dust, indeed, nothing too offensively personal could
well be said. It might have been lineally descended
from the dust which 131a4ued Pharaoh. The heat,
too, judged by the thermometer, was tremendous
—between 108 deg. and 110 deg. in the shade.
This would be exceptionally severe in some even
of the very hot parts of India. But, judged by
its effects—not on the thermometer, but on flesh
and blood—it was heat of a very different kind
from the Indian. It was dry, stimulating, almost
invigorating in its immediate effects, and though this
effect is likely to be followed by a reaction if the wind
lasts long, it rarel3r does last long. The evenings and
nights are generally cool enough to be bracing. They
are often too cold even in the height of the hot season.
This is, indeed, the only charge that in my humble
uinion is worth bringing against the Melbourne
-tate. The strong may be all the stronger for being
braced by the cold against the heat. But the alterna-
tions of temperature are too great for very young or
delicate or imprudent people. This may help to account
for the somewhat surprising fact that the death-rate
of Melbourne is greater than that of London and
most English towns. But, on the other hand, the
combined death-rate of Melbourne and its suburbs is
lower than the English death-rate, and the suburbs
are so near the city that they are practically one and
the same. The distinction is rather municipal than
real. A stranger may pass in a hansom from so-called
suburb to suburb without knowing that he has left
Melbourne; and some of the suburbs are among the
chief charms and glories of the place. Londoners
think themselves blessed above the citizens of most
European capitals in having sea-breezes and sea-
bathing within such easy reach of them. The Mel-
bournians not only have their Brighton, Hastings, and
Margate, to which the well-to-do can escape, leaving
the crowd behind them; but the crowd itself, with no
spare shillings or spare time for long railway
journeys, has admirable sea-bathing and purest sea-
breezes within easy walking distance for any man
who is bound to walk. There are few, however, I
imagine, who cannot afford the fourpenny railway
ticket for return second-class. One often, indeed,
sees in the first-class carriages people whom in England
one would expect tq. see in the third. Ten minutes
and twopence may take you from one of the principal
thoroughfares of the city to within a few hundred
yards of the sea. There, indeed, the sharks impose on
theoprudent bather the relatively high toll of sixpence.
Their number and ferocity make it unsafe to bathe in
the open, so barns have been formed by carrying out
siihitaorktshelooskeaanlliosadngedia evnacinlo.surietsis tahsroorutgloif Nagyhtiicarhiuthme
reversed, the visitors being inside the cages but, as
these are big enough for a herd of hippopotami to dig-
port themselves in, the sixpence is as pleasantly in-
vested as it could be a bathing-machine on the shark-
less shores of Brighton or Margate.

elim,

Not that to the Melbournia,n the need of escap-
ing to seli' baths and breezes is as pressing as it is
to so many Londoners. Melbourne is unusually
open and airy, having been made, as it were, to
order—laid out on a regular plan, instead of grow-
ing up spontaneously in the happy-go-lucky strag-
gling fashion of Old-World cities, with their narrow,
winding lanes and stifling alleys through which
the air has no free play.. The streets here cut each
other at right angles as precise as Euclid's. Many
of them are unusually broad and even, the narrow
oni:s—which by a quaint arrangement alternate
with the brdad offer no obstacles to the sweep of
the wind. This style is at least healthy, if too stiff and
Precise to be picturesque or pleasing to the eye. It
can scarcely, however' be considered unpleasing. If the
eye is offended, it is by the inharmonious juxtaposition
in the same street of handsome and paltry houses—a
jumble of Grovesnor-square and Mile-end. The latter
bear trace of the days when the new-born Melbourne,
scrambling for gold, had no leisure to think of architec-
tural beauty or ornamentation; the former have
gradually arisen since, and as leases fall in will probably
jostle their weak neighbours altogether out of ex-
istence. Then some of the Melbotirne streets would
do credit to any capital. Not that there is even
about these small houses any sign of poverty. There
is, perhaps, nothing in Melbourne more remarkable—
nothing that strikes a stranger more than the absence
of all squalor and distress. There are, I suppose,
poverty-stricken quarters in Melbourne, if one knew
where to look for them; but one would certainly have
to look for them. I have seen small houses and
cottages in plenty, but never one which did not look
as if its owner had g the necessaries and some, at
least, of the luxuries of life.

Even in this hasty bird's-eye view of Melbourne
there are many striking points which I have not been
able to name. There is the Library, for instance,
where the poorest man, without any introduction, can
enjoy from early morning till ten at night shelter,
warmth, and the choice of, I believe, some 100,000
volumes. Melbourne is more than usually rich in in-
stitutions devised for the public good, its community
haying been more than usually public-spirited and well-

to-do.-. . .