AUCKLAND WEEKLY NEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9944, 7 October 1895, Page 6

AUCKLAND WEEKLY NEWS.

CHRISTMAS NUMBER. SPECIAL PRIZE COMPETITIONS. It has been the custom for some years past of the Proprietors of the Auckland Weeklv News to offer special prizes for the best contributions on the subjects selected for the annual competitions, which form, now so interesting a feature of the Christmas Number of that widely-read and popular journal. This practice was adopted, and has been continued, in the hope that ib might stimulate and encourage whatever literary gift or graces lay latent among the great mass of readers of the Auckland Weekly News. That no embryo Dickens, or Thackeray, or Stevenson, or Barrie has been detected hitherto among the list of competitors in these annual literary tournaments, is, perhaps, a little disappointing, but need not occasion surprise. In a young country a native literature is a plant of slow growth. Although it is 500 years and more since Columbus discovered America, the great Republic of the West can boast of scarcely any dramatist or poeb, historian or novelist, whose works are entitled to rank with those of the giants of English literature. Tne colonisation of New Zealand has been accomplished within an ordinary lifetime. Looking ah the marvellous material progress that the colony has made and is making—the great cities that iiave grown up in the North as well as the South Island, the schools and colleges that have been established, the roads and railways that have been constructed, our colossal export trade which is valued at many millions—it is not, perhaps, to be wondered ab that we sometimes forget that New Zealand is, after all, but a land of yesterday. Dr. Johnson was the greatest force in letters in England when Captain Cook was gazing for the first time at the inhospitable shores of Poverty Bay, and two years later Sir Walter Scott was an infant " mewling and puking in the nurse's arras." Macaulay was a boy of nine, wribing wonderfully precocious letters to his mother at the time of the massacre of the Boyd, and his first essay in the Edinburgh Review appeared in tho same year that the missionaries in Now Zealand were making their first Maori convert. Dickens was in the zenith of his fame before Sir George Grey came to the colony. "Vanity Fair" had nob made its appearance. In fifty years New Zealand ha« made enormous strides. One can hardly believe it possible, looking at all the evidence of solidity and permanence thab is visible on every side, at the busy quays, the thronged thoroughfares, the churches and theatres, the public libraries and newspaper offices, thab at a period within the memory of those still living the site of the Auckland of to-day was a wilderness of forest and fern, the solitude of which was only broken by the weird cry of the morepork or the war slogans of the Maoris. In another fifty years New Zealand will have produced a literature at once virile and original. And it may be that some of those who are destined to take a foremost place in her literary ranks will bo found among the competitors in the Auckland Weekly News special prize competitions, which we have much pleasure in announcing as follows : — NO. I.—A POLITICAL STORY OF NEW ZEA LAND. First Prize £3 3 0 Second Prize 22 0 NO. lI.—A MINING STORY OF NEW ZEALAND.

First Prize _ .. .. „ £3 3 0 Second Prize 22 0 These subjects afford abundant scope for the exercise of the imaginative faculties. The length of each contribution must in no case exceed three columns of the Auckland Weekly News, and should be written on one side only. Competitors may send contributions in both classes. All MSS. must be addressed to the editor of the Auckland Weekly News, marked on the outside "Competition," and should reach him not later than November 1. Where a nom de plume is adopted the real name and address should be enclosed in a separate envelope.