MELBOURNE, AND HER CIVILIZATION. 7
casts of ancient and modern sculpture, from the best European sources, copies of the Elgin marbles from the British Museum, and other productions from the European Continent." Yes, and Summers stands side by side with Michaelangelo! And poor busts of Moore and Goethe come between Antinous and the Louvre Apollo the Lizard slayer! But this, it may be said, is after all only an affair of an individual, the arranger. Not altogether so. If an audience thinks that a thing is done badly, they express their opinion, and the failure has to vanish. And how large a portion of the audience of Melbourne city, pray, is of opinion that quite half of its architecture is a failure, is hideous, is worthy only, as architecture, of abhorrence? how many are shocked by the atrocity of the Medical College building at the University? how many feel that Bourke Street, taken as a whole, is simply an insult to good taste?
"Yes, all this," it is said, "may be true, as abstract theory, but it is at present quite out of the sphere of practical application. You would talk of Federalism, and here is our good ex-Premier of New South Wales, Sir Henry Parkes, making it the subject of a farewell denunciation. 'I venture to say now,' says Sir Henry Parkes, 'here amongst you what I said when I had an opportunity in London, what I ventured to say to Lord Derby himself, that this federation scheme must prove a failure.' You talk of Free-trade and here is what an intelligent writer in the Argus says apropos of 'the promised tariff negotiations with Tasmania.' 'In America,' he says, 'there is no difficulty in inducing the States to see that, whatever may be their policy as regards the outside world, they should interchange as between each other in order that they may stand on as broad a base as possible, but we can only speculate on the existence of such a national spirit here.' — These facts, my good sir," it is said, "as indicative of the amount of opposition that the nation feels to the ideas of Free-trade and Federalism, are not encouraging." — They are not, let us admit it at once, but there are others which are; others, some of which we have been considering, and, above and beyond everything, there is one invaluable and in the end irresistible ally of these ideas : there is the Tendency of the Age — the Time-Spirit, as Goethe calls it. Things move more quickly now than they used to do : ideas, the modern ideas, are permeating the masses swiftly and thoroughly and universally.
