MELBOURNE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1158, 7 February 1874, Page 9

MELBOURNE.

(FBOM OtTB OWN CORRESPONDENT.) January 21st. The present is one of those dull times that are so hard upon journalists and newspaper correspondents. The days pass and yield so little to chronicle or comment on, to praise, j to ridicule, or to find fault with. We have so little even to talk about that the ordinary supplies of scandal are woefully deficient. So much is this the case that the escapade of a barmaid running off in what was called a i mysterious way with a young fellow, son of a well- known politician, was the main topic of discussion among our idlers for some days. | A newspaper took up the matter and tried hard to extract sensation from it by hinting that chloroform had something to do with the abduction, and suggesting that there j there might be a "foul deed," and all the rest of it, at the bottom of the affair. But it was no use. The young woman — a very handsome exemplar, I must say, of the barmaid style of beauty — wrote back to say that she had left to be married. She has since retiirned, but whether married or nob I canuot undertake to say. The Young Lochinvar of the case was engaged to marry the daughter of a man who is very wealthy in bricks and mortar ; so much so as to be able to give £30,000 apiece with three daughters as their marriage portions. Should the misguided youth have preferred the bright eyes of his Hebe to the £30,000 of his flancde, to such an extent as to have bound himself to her in indissoluble bonds, there will be rage in the paternal heart. But what is this, Dunedin readers may say, to them ? In fact, what is it to us ? Nothing could show the stagnation in our life, and the scarcity of topics of conversation, more than the attention that has been given to and the interest that has been excited by this affair.

Things have not gone all smoothly with the team of the cricketing phenomenon — the Great Grace, The attempts to explain the ridiculous defeat of All England at Stawell, by the rough condition of the ground, always seemed rather tame. However, more lately we have had other explanations. The weather was hot, the atmosphere was dry, the men were thirsty, the liquor was good, hospitality was abundant, and — well the rest speaks for itself. If anything more is wanted, it is supplied by those ridiculous scores, and by the sight of some of the best cricketers of England going out one after another with nothing but 0 appended to their name. Besides, it seems the proteasionals had their sense of personal dignity wrought upon by the stimulating influence of contact with Colonial equality and absorption of Colonial beer, and they began to ask themselves whether one raan was not a 9 good as another, and why they should be treated with the marked distinction shown between them and the soi disant "gentlemen." The refusal of the Great Grace to attend a ball to which the All England team was invited, withotit distinction, tended to strengthen this feeling. So it has been held by people who profesa to know a good deal about the matter, that the professionals considered themselves unfairly treated, determined to resent the wrong, did so in two ways — by playing badly and by drinking heavily — and that the latter mode assisted the first very materially. There is no doubt that this theory explains the hollowness of the Stawell match much better than the roughness of the ground, which of course would have told equally against both sides. And if it is so, who can blame the cricketers ? Doubtless th«y received and imparted a good deal more pleasure by enjoying themselves within the bounds of reason, and by alternating, during that hot weather, nobbier* and " duck-eggs," than they could have derived from the game played in its fellest, sternest rigour. It is right to say, oa be-

half of the " gentlemen " cricketers, that there is one of them who merits the title, who pays all his expenses and declines to receive pay on the ground that he is " not a professional." In reporting phraseology, "it would be invidious to specify the name," and, to confess the truth. 1 don't know it, although the fact seems to be correct enough.

We have had, during the last few days, some deaths of men whose names were more or less prominently connected with the progress of Victoria in its early days. One of these was Mr W. J. T. Clarke, the great Australian land magnate and millionaire, the possessor of vast estates in most of the colonies, besides bank, railway, and insurance shares, and heaps of idle money. Indeed, Mr Clarke answered the description given of himself by one of our wealthy lower orders —He was "disgustingly rich." I remember the action brought several years ago by Mr Clarke against somebody, who had agreed to borrow £50,000 from him, and afterwards refused to do so. Fancy taking proceedings against your friends to make them borrow money from you ! But his case was, that instead of having the money placed on mortgage at 8 per cent, he was obliged to leave it in a bank, where he only got 3|. Unhappy, illused man ! All sorts of guesses — for they can be nothing more — are made as to the amount of his wealth. The estimates range from two to three millions. It is divided amongst his three sons, one of whom lives in Victoria, and the other two in Tasmania. It is needless to say that his funeral was largely and influentially attended. It was affecting to see the long cortege of carriages bearing persons of all classes, and callings, and creeds, all collected there by the single hearted desire to pay the last homage to the humble modest worth represented by this fortune of three millions. And yet they say that we are a materialistic, money-lov-ing, wealth-worshipping community.

The next death that I have t > refer to is that of Mr William Robertson, of Colac, one of the most early colonists, and largest landholders of Victoria. Mr Robertson's connection with the colony dates, if I may be allowed the Hibernicism, from before it 3 existence. He, as a Tasmanian settler, contributed to the cost of the expeditions of Batman to Port Phillip, which contributed so much to its settlement in 1836. In his large mansion, at Oolac, he entertained the Duke of Edinburgh, when he was doing his tour in the Western District. It is a characteristic and not unworthy illustration of the public spirit of Mr Robertson, and his leve of manly sports, that when arrangements were being made preliminary to the great cricket matoh the other day between Victoria and All England, it was desired to get his son George to play in the match, and to take the captaincy of the Victorian team. The young gentleman naturally declined to quit the bedside of his dying father for such a task ; but the old gentleman considered that this was a sort of duty, too, to uphold the honour of the Colony on the cricket held, and seat his son to the contest.

And, lastly, I wish to mention the name of Mr James Ellis, as that of a lately departed notability. 1 suppose a good many of the present generation of patrons of amusements bardly know the name of James Ellis, and yet it is that of a man to whom thousands owe many hours of agreeable entertainment. In 1851, when the London Cremorne Gardens were perhaps at their best, their proprietor was Mr Ellis. All those scenes of coloured lights, of pyrotechnic bombardments of Algiers, and sieges of Gibraltar — Sebastopol was then unmolested by foreign invaders — all those whirling dances, where the delights of Mabllle were presented in a chastened, bourgeois, cockneyfied form to the British shopkeeper and British workman — all these were due to Mr James Ellis. Many people who came out to Melbourne a little while after, found that we bad our Creinorne Gardens here, and that the proprietor of these also was a Mr James Ellia. They soon found, on ftirther inquiry, that our Ellis was the Ellis of London, who had bsen allured by the auri sacra fames t<> transfer his talents and his enterprise to the rising city of the South. What a rough, genial, nidiinentary sort of c py our Creinorne was of the other. And yet with the well-to-do condition of the people, at a time when all were making money fast — with the zest for amusement that had already begun to exhibit itself as a prominent feature in the Melbourne character — all were pleased and delighted, and happy. There was the trip from Melbourne in the quaintlooking steam "Gondola," built from designs supplied by»Mr Ellis himself — the landing at tne rude pier, and the arrival on the scene, where everything was new and unfinished, and incomplete, but where all were jolly and good-tempered. A little pleased us then, and a little made tho pulaes beat faster, and the blood flow more freely. We were young in those days, comule Planco; the country was young and new, fortune was lavish, and the future was bright and golden for ua all. It is a melancholy illustration of the uncertainty of human affairs to reflect that the rnigician who gave us all this and aspired to give so much more, died the other day whilst keeping a small shop in the Eastern Arcade for tho sale of gas stoves; and the place he was to turn into fairyland, admission one shilling, has for a number of years been used as a private asylum for lunatics. "Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune" — but heroics are usoless, and would be out of place. Poor Ellis, he had long dropped out of recollection, and the news of his death made many aware of his existence for the first time, and informed many others that a man who was once very -well kuown had

been living for a long time bo utterly forgotten that the account of his death was in fact a revivifying of his memory.

The, threatened drought has altogether broken up. We have had several rains that have visited the whole extent of the country, and have prevented any danger from that score. Many squatters who relied upon the drought as an agency that would dear their ground of selectors — "frizzle them up, sir !" — have been disappointed. Governor Weld, of West Australia, has been on a visit to this Colony just at the time that Governor Bowen has been taking a holiday tour in Tasmania. Our Tasmanian neighbours this year complain that they do not receive their usual number of Victorian holiday keepers. It seems that by the extortion and gross mismanagement andneglect of their hotels — by the disgraceiul and harassing exactions of their Customhouse — by the high rates of the steamboat fares — they have succeeded, or nearly so, in killing the Victorian holiday-keep*.' ing goose that laid them every summer golden eggs. We shall, when the contem« plated Gipps Land and Upper Yarra railways are carried out, have means of readily getting to fine mountain scenery of our own ; and when we have that, probably hotel property at Hobart Town will sell very cheap. Then, to add to the deterring influences, the Tasmanians have lately taken to racing rival coaches on the main road, and getting up accidents, in which, however, only Victorian tourists have hitherto been injured or killed, and have supplemented the attractiveness of a visit to their island by providing that if you wear tweed clothes and a round wide-awake hat you will probably be arrested as a supposed criminal. The other day a young gentleman belonging to the Melbourne University, who was making a tour of the Island, was arrested on suspicion of being an absconding apprentice from a vessel, and satisfying his captors that this was not the case the next day at another town was arrested again on the same charge, and solemnly remanded to Launceston ir. custody of a Superintendent of Police. Of course at the end of his journey the blunder was discovered, and he was released, that he might wherever he goes give flattering accounts of the hospitable way in which Tasmanians treat their visitors.

Our P. and O. service is not so smart this year as last. The last incoming mail was some days behind time on arriving at Melbourne. Seventeen or eighteen months ago the steamers used to arrive with regularity four or five days before they were due. But then the contract was not made, and now it is, and that makes all the difference. The Company now goes in for economy of coal, and does not care so much about time.

There is little news from the other Colonies. You will have seen that in Queensland, the House elected under Mr Palmer's new " one-korse constituency" Act had a majority opposed to the Government, and showed it by choosing a Speaker different from the one nominated by the Government. So, without waiting for a more formal vote of want of confidence, Mr Palmer and bis colleagues resigned ; and now Mr Macalister has formed a Government. Intelligence from the Palmer goldfields, in the north of Queensland, is not very encouraging. Besides the distance, the danger of the roads and of the blacks, the scarcity and high price of provisions, it is doubtful if there is any extent of gold bearing ground there. The field seems to resemble the other Queensland diggings in the superficiality and narrow area of its alluvial deposits. The crushings at Yam Creek in the Northern Territory have turned out badly so far, and it seems likely that the Adelaide speculators will get but little out of their ventures in the North.