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Corinthian columns within. There is nothing striking throughout, unless its magnitude, with a variety of ornaments and profuse gilding; although the white and black marble pavement is handsome. Like similar sacred edifices in Spain, the interior aspect of this building is gloomy, but not so melancholy-looking as often observed elsewhere. The chief attractions are the tombs of Queen Isabella and her husband King Ferdinand, with a magnificent monument in the royal chapel attached. Their sepulchre is magnificent, and, as a work of art, deserves minute examination. The recumbent statues of the two sovereigns lying on its summit, cannot, however, be thus seen to advantage. Nevertheless, the numerous embellishments and surrounding rail are all very curious, while they give an excellent idea of artistic ingenuity at the period this structure was erected, After examining various interesting objects which the cathedral contains, being Sunday, the writer had an opportunity of seeing the archbishop, who was present during the performance of high mass. On retiring, he blessed the surrounding congregation, then kneeling, by making the sign of a cross over their heads, both right and left. His grace afterwards walked down the centre aisle, followed by train-bearers and suite, to the great door, through which the procession disappeared. Whereupon, many humble devotees again quickly found their legs, previously abjectly bent to a feeble fellow-mortal. For such the archbishop really appeared, being of little stature, stooping through age or infirmities, and whom a gust of wind might have overthrown. But this genuflexion to living man is not uncommon in a country, where prostration both of body and intellect, before dead images or inanimate pictures, so universally obtains. During the service just mentioned, two fiddles, a bass violin, and clarionet accompanied the singers when the musical portion of the ceremony was performed. This being the only occasion, excepting once at the court cathedral of Dresden, in which the writer ever saw profane fiddles introduced during service, he could not avoid being astonished; although in Spain they think otherwise. He was, however, still further amazed, when the musicians played some sort of jig, or merry tune, at which many Scotchmen would have felt much inclination to join chorus, if not actually to "lilt" a Highland fling; the sounds produced on this occasion being so very different from what Presbyterians consider sacred and solemn, or compatible with any religious ceremony whatever.

Subsequent to mass being performed, it seemed singular to observe the number of females kneeling on the bare pavement before various altars, images, and pictures, then saying their prayers devoutly, and to all appearance quite unconscious of external objects. Many were ladies, and beautifully dressed, most being in black attire, with fan, veil, and also often carrying a book or string of beads in their hands. Fewer men were present than women, but the proportion of males was here, and generally elsewhere, much greater than in France, where seldom any other persons than old women and children frequent the churches for devotional pur

poses.

OUR GOLDEN EMPIRE.

I AM sick of hearing "fine" writers describe Australia as the "brightest jewel of the British crown." It reminds me so much of the highflown rhapsodies of O'Connell, about Ireland being the emerald of the British tiara, the gem of the sea, that graced the coronal of British Majesty, which were common in a time of political romance, before commerce ruled the councils of statesmen, and before we were taught by a second-I forgot, a third-Napoleon (taking the baby-king into account) to practically sign and seal the declaration of the first, that the English were a nation of shopkeepers. Both extremes are objectionable, but commerce being now the great ruling power, let us drop poetry, and call our jewels by their proper names. South England is the copper, Mid-England the iron, and Wales the slate and lead that go to compose the house that Trade built for the workshop of the world; and North England keeps the forges going. In like manner, our dependencies may be described in more prosaic terms than of old; yielding to the spirit of the age, Canada stands as the good sound heart of oak foundation on which our distant empire is built, and Australia is the nugget which has replaced the much-talked-of diadem. But, if all is not gold that glitters, all is not profitable that is golden. The childish fever of standing on Tom Tittler's ground, picking up gold and silver, that carried off its thousands to be buried in gold diggings a few years ago, is abated; the Anglo-Saxon character stands out again superior to the temptation of easy acquisition and mere hap-hazard gain; the old English spirit is once more alive in opening up the resources of new countries by its indomitable perseverance and patient industry; and it is now steadily applying itself to the resources of our new eastern empire, which, if not per se more valuable, are even more profitable than gold. Let us inquire, then, what are these resources; our eyes no longer dazzled by the yellow deposits, let us look steadily at the even richer green, and the grey, and the brown, and the black, from which gold can be as surely extracted, if by a more tedious process, by a less precarious one.

What, then, does Australia produce? Gold, undoubtedly; but gold in many shapes and forms-gold picked up on the surface by idle adventurers, not worth a pinch of that March dust, a peck of which is traditionally worth a Jew's ransom to the industrious plodding English farmer -gold crushed out of quartz with pain and trouble, and alloyed with fraud for sale gold dug for with weary limbs and broken hearts, and, when found, only buying a hateful life and a dreadful end-gold extracted in true, honest, hard-working English fashion, from baser metals, from the trunks of thousand-year old timber, from the fleecy coats of fecundant sheep, from the blubber of whales, and from the thousand-and-one resources which lavish Nature has bestowed upon the Flinders-christened "Terra Australis."

A new country-till the demon of gain lifts up the sod that covers the vein of precious metals-essentially is a pastoral one; and, for years and years, the settlers in this new continent put faith, in their simple but sensible fashion, in their flocks and herds. How was that faith repaid?

By an annual increase of some eighty per cent., 'till flocks and herds going on at this disproportionate rate of increase to the population, which could not consume them, and could not get a handy market for dead meat, were devoted to a new trade-tallow. And a profitable trade it was while it lasted; but a new element was soon to mix in the commercial world of the far east, and draw a population that would bring sheep to their destined fate again-to be mutton, and not tallow. But whether mutton or tallow, the fleece of the dead sheep could take no other shape than wool-formerly a product not known to Englishmen out of England; now we find it figuring in our imports as high as about sixty-nine million pounds per annum, and every year contributing to the wealth of this country (taking the price at an average of 2s. per lb.) produce of the value of nearly seven millions sterling, the Continent, which formerly had the almost exclusive supply of wool for our manufactures, modestly taking its place in the second column of wool statistics. And, while making us independent of foreign supply for wool and tallow, these new colonies were giving us extra light in oil-a light which we chose to put under a bushel, by refusing to protect to them the right of fishery on their own coasts and in their own bays, true to the paternal (or rather maternal, and certainly old-womanly) policy that lost us America, and which the Americans, with bitter sagacity, and by way of teaching us another lesson on the text of 1777, immediately took into their own hands, and harpooned the Australian whales in the Australian waters, and sold us the produce; not that it was a particularly smart or cute act, but that our conduct was dull and imbecile.

Then came the gold discoveries-the least profitable or pleasing part of our story-with their concomitant attendants of idleness, profligacy, gambling, prodigality, and disappointment. The golden age, in its coarse sense, has now passed away, and the golden age of reason supervened

And now we come back to the question, What are the real golden resources of this new land? The staples are wool, oil, and whalebone; the possible resources are, as the sea sands, innumerable. But let us explore the tracts of wealth that lie between these two. South Australia. has made itself world-famous by its copper mines; the yield of the celebrated Burra-Burra mine, we believe, is twenty-three per cent., in contrast to the average yield of the Cornish and Devon mines of ten or twelve per cent. of metal. In Western Australia there are mines yielding as much as thirty-five per cent., the ores of which have fetched as much as 347. per ton at Swansea; and lead mines, giving a produce nearly all metal-namely, eighty-four per cent. It is in this latter colony, too, that those inexhaustible forests exist, wherein trees grow a hundred feet and more without a branch, and of such a durable character, that they are found equal to iron for naval purposes, and a perfect substitute for copper bottoms, as they resist the terredo navalis of Australian waters, as well as barnacles and all other marine corruptions The gum which exudes from them is also found to be so distasteful to the white ant of tropical climates, that the government are adopting them for the fortifications of the Mauritius, as the only timber impervious to that destructive insect; and the Indian railway companies are ordering up cargoes of them for use as sleepers on which to lay their rails. Until

lately the contractors for the Indian railways had obtained from England-imported thither, in the first instance, from northern ports-Baltic timber, subjected in England to an expensive creosoting process, which has proved totally ineffective against the attacks of the white ant, and, in despair, they were turning to the miserable alternative of iron sleepers -an alternative well known in the forebodings of their engineers as ruinous in cost, expensive in wear, and essentially most dangerous in In a fortunate moment, their attention was directed to the Jarrah, or (colonially called) mahogany timber of Western Australia, imperishable in quality and inexhaustible in quantity; and they sent down orders for it to such an extent as the funds of local hewers are totally inadequate to supply, although at a price which would afford a large profit to any companies with sufficient capital to execute them.

use.

A peculiar feature of this timber, and the one which renders it so valuable in the eyes of shipwrights and railway contractors, is the remarkable fact that iron, when passed through it as bolts, or let into it as chains, will not corrode. It is only right, however, to add that these imperishable woods are confined to one portion of the Australian continent, Western Australia, and the contractors of the South Australian railways have had to send to that colony for timber for the construction of the Adelaide line; but they exist in such vast quantities as to demand a place and a foremost one-among the aggregate resources of Australia.

Leaving out of sight that questionable commodity, gold (which, however, in a few short years made Port Phillip, newly christened Victoria, a state giving laws to the country of which it had only been a small port, and collected together a population of nearly six hundred thousand souls, increasing at the present time at the pace of thirty thousand a year), taking no account of some two and a half million ounces of gold that come from one colony alone every year, because it is not always the most desirable product of a new country, we must remark that the metallic deposits of Australia are wonderful. At their head, we believe, nearly topping every copper mine in the known world, stands the Wheal For⚫ tune at Champion Bay (some day, perhaps, and that not a distant one, destined to be a wheel of fortune with all prizes and no blanks), exhibiting its thirty-eight per cent. yield. Of lead we have already spoken, and plumbago and other minerals are known in large quantities and great purity all over Australia. Coal, perhaps not equal to Wallsend, but yet of useful quality, and no doubt in abundance, also exists in this great country.

From natural to acquired resources, we have only to look to the splendid supply of horses which the Indian cavalry procure from this continent, which fetch prices averaging fifty-eight pounds per horse, whilst the steeds contributed by equine South America scarcely reach an average of twelve pounds. Of course Swan River, whose horses we are more particularly speaking of in reference to the high prices realised, has the great advantage in the trade of a closer proximity to India, which makes the contrast all the greater by reducing the expense and risk of carriage.

A great wine-producing country, too, Australia must soon become. The true sort of grape flourishes there, and it is only a petty system of legislation dictated from home, and protecting the foreign manufacturer, that

has impeded the development of this great article of commerce. But error is but short-lived; it is soon discovered when nibbling at the public good. The colonial wine-grower cannot be much longer obstructed by excise laws made to protect foreign brandies with a miserable view to the profit arising from the customs duties on the importation of them, and as soon as he is allowed to distil brandy from the refuse, or "lees," of the grape, he will be able to produce wine of as good quality as, and at an infinitely lower rate than, the Peninsula.

The writer of this was, he believes, some twenty years ago, the first to send out to Australia some plants of the true Zante currant (procured with great trouble from Ionia through the influence of a large firm in London), in those pretty little contrivances the portable glass conservatories (which provided by condensation and the exclusion of external air for the natural thirst of the plants), before Wardian cases were known. They have done well, and multiplied, and there is no reason in the world why Australian raisins and currants should not soon take the place of Turkish or Levantine. Olives arrive at a rare perfection in these colonies; in fact, most of the tropical fruits flourish in this more temperate climate.

Our friend Mr. Routledge, who can produce such good paper from such strange materials-even, as he said, from the wood of the floor on which he was standing-and who has long rendered himself quite independent of rags, and consequently able to snap his fingers at the French emperor and his hundred per cent. duty, is prepared, we believe, to use the native flax of Australasia to any extent in paper-making, and is using it at his mills at Eynsham in considerable quantities.

Gum, from the "blackboy" tree, promises to be a profitable article of commerce, and to threaten the trade of Senegal. By the last mail we heard of a cargo being shipped at Fremantle, and some avant-couriers, in the shape of samples which have already appeared, have been well received, and pronounced equal to the finest gum-arabic.

These are only a few of the resources which are to be converted, in the crucible of industry, into gold. These are but a portion of the really golden fruits produced by our vast empire in Australia. Doubtless they are, and will long be, the principal ones-the main roads to wealth, on which there are many byways all tending in the same direction. And the most blessed product that those latitudes can boast has not been mentioned yet where the gold-fever has not reached, and left behind it its secondary symptom and more fatal form, familiarly known at Victoria as "D. T.," the balmy atmosphere grows and produces the richest prize a man can seek-buoyant and glorious health. This most valuable of all wealth is more particularly the fortune that falls to the share of children. Dr. Rennie, the staff-surgeon who has for the last seven years had charge of the last remaining convict establishment in Australia-that on the western coast-and who has just sailed to join the expedition to China, has put in print his experience and his knowledge that, during the thirty years of the colonisation of the particular districts over which his inquiries extend, scarlet fever, whooping-cough, and measles have been and are yet unknown, and pulmonary diseases quite exceptional, even as importations. Happy, then, must be the prospects of a country in which health and wealth are indigenous !

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