filled. The ceremony was incidentally memorable from the fine enunciation and beautiful voice of the Professor who presented the candidates to the Chancellor.
After the degree ceremony we went on to the Town Hall, where the Lady Mayoress was giving a tea-party. Mayors and Mayoresses are very important people in Australia; they are lavish in their entertainment of strangers, and are the centre not only of the civic life of a town, but often of its social life as well, the two things being usually indistinguishable. The Melbourne Town Hall is worthy of a great city that is the seat of government, and the rallying point of all the different phases of life on the continent. One sumptuous council chamber is decorated with Australian woods, many of them very beautiful, the central panels of black wood especially, which were delicately variegated like the back of an old fiddle.
The same day we went to an evening party at Federal Government House. Melbourne is the seat of the Federal as well as of the State Government; and the balls or receptions at Government House bring together what in a less democratic country one would call the society of the state. Society in Melbourne is very cultivated and agreeable. It is more settled, more homo-
