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police cant as a " mounter." A s years rolled on he struck into a reputable way of living, and succeeded. H e became a cattle-dealer, and saved some money, after the gold discoveries, by lucky land speculations. From this he became an extensive squatter, kept a grand house in East Melbourne, where he was profusely hospitable to those w h o saw no objection to accepting his invitations. H e had his carriage and servants in livery, and used to be driven, pompous and prideful, through the streets. But the wheel of fortune turned, his wealth took wings and flew away. T h o u g h not reduced to the low-watermark of his early colonial career, it was low enough, and his last days were passed in the Melbourne Hospital, an institution which has witnessed the end of m a n y a better m a n and more meritorious colonist. DANIEL WELLESLEY O'DONOVAN'S name winds up this segment of humanity. His sponsors baptismally hooked him to the two great Irishmen, D a n O'Connell and the hero of Waterloo. Hailing from Kerry, he was born and bred in the vicinity of " Killarney's classic lakes." A fine-proportioned, pleasant-faced, funny-eyed young m a n , Port Phillip offered him a good chance of carving out a comparatively bright future ; but there was a big stumbling-block in his way in either the brandy-cask or the beer barrel, or both, and these proved his destruction. Moderately grounded in an English education, he was, perhaps, the best Latin and Greek scholar in the province. H e was exceptionally well posted in all the branches of Celtic history, and could give you extracts from the Annals of the Four Masters, The Book of Ballymole, or the Psalter of Tara, as pat as he could roll out a R o m a n Catholic Rosary. H e succeeded in obtaining clerical employment, but driven, as he would say, by the hot winds, he rapidly acquired an unconquerable appetite for " rum and two ales." His quill-driving and he, therefore, soon dissolved partnership, when he betook himself to any chance employment falling in his way, from private tuition to shepherding, from wharf-labouring to scavengering; but he could never keep sober for a month ; the curse clove to him with a tenacity that rendered it impossible to shake it off. T h e last decade of O'Donovan's life was passed in the K e w Lunatic Asylum, where he died a few years ago. O'Donovan was given to reciting favourite passages from authors he had well studied. In such a m o o d he was indulging one November afternoon, poised against a superannuated g u m tree, on the verge of the Merri Creek crossing-place leading from Melbourne to Heidelberg. T h e first resident Judge (Willis) resided at the latter place, and on this occasion his H o n o r was going home, and approaching the tree, though he could perceive no h u m a n being in sight, he was surprised to hear, as if from the interior of the trunk, delivered in true declamatory style, portions of one of Cicero's orations against Catiline. T h e Judge pulled up astounded, and for a time did not well know what to make of it. T h e voice could not issue from the tree, though it never occurred to him that it might come from some person at its off side. Dashing forward, and slewing his horse round, he was at once face to face with the bush orator, who, without seeming to notice the intruder (whom he well knew), continued until he had finished the peroration, and then doffing his weather-beaten cabbage-tree hat with a low bow, expressed a hope that his H o n o r was not displeased with the harmless bit of pastime he had witnessed. Willis complimented him on the taste and style of his deliverance, which led to a brief conversation, the end being that the Judge ascertained w h o he was and took him into his hired service with an order to march at once to Heidelberg. Amongst Willis's two or three horse screws, in ministering to the cleanliness of an old trap, and keeping things right in the stable, O'Donovan appeared as if in Elysium for a few weeks. Fate was already weaving into poor O'Donovan's future thicker threads of darkness than had appeared hitherto, and there was d o o m e d to be a speedyflare-upbetween him and his new patron. It was Willis's custom to open each monthly Criminal Session of the Supreme Court with an address or charge to the jury panel; but, in reality, more of an ultra-official oration to the general public. These fulminations had, however, the merit of careful preparation, and though more abusive than pungent, were on the whole clever specimens of tolerably readable, though overdone phraseology, highly spiced with well-fitting pedantry. They were crammed with quotations, ancient and modern, from languages living and dead. Never did one of them appear without Latin cxcerpta. Willis was aware that his Crier or Tipstaff would be unable to be at his post on one of these occasions, and he decided upon trotting out his favourite groom in a new capacity. O'Donovan had a good voice, and could talk, rant and shout, (in more than one sense), and of his eligibility as a locum tenens Crier there could be no doubt. H e was