MELBOURNE.

Evening Star, Volume VII, Issue 1949, 4 August 1869, Page 2

MELBOURNE.

(from our own correspondent.) July 27, 1860.

' Melancholy seems to have taken the place of news since my last. One by one several old colonists have departed for that “ bourne from which no traveller returns,” the obituary, including Mr P. Johnson, some time Mayor of Richmond, and the wife of the Hon. George Rolfe. The late cold weather has probably produced the increase of mortality amongst the wealthy and aged—giving an instance of the truth of Dr Richardson’s law—that beneath a certain degree of temperature every fall one degree of the thermometer a a steady and measurable increase of deaths.

The cold, however, has not been un~ to the healthy, and is just enough to supply the bracing effect so much needed in our warm climate.

Public out-door amusements have been more abundant than when the weather was wet—notably velocipede exhibitions. That at Colling wood Cricket Ground, on Saturday last, was, however, almost a complete failure, and the most interesting events were postponed. Mr James Smith, lately Librarian to our Parliament, delivered a lecture to the Early Closing Association last night. The contrast between this and the last lecture was most marked in every way—even to the choice of chairmen. Plainly, Mr Michie’s was the Ministerial contribution to the Early Closing movement —Mr Smith’s the Opposition. I am bound to say that the latter was by far the most valuable intrinsically. Mr Smith’s lecture did not glitter like Mr Michie’s, but it had a pleasant brightness of its own. The former was wholly superficial ; the latter had a considerable amount of thought in it. The barrister had, all through, the advocate’s tone and style—partisan, though half conccaledly : the litterateur took no side, but put forward some historical parallels, not asserting them as parallels, but leaving his hearers to discern the fact, and to be the more impressed with it, because they found it out for themselves. Above all the difference in moral tone was remarkable. The ex-Minister even when trying to be most amiable could not wholly veil the cynic, and the sarcasm beneath his bonhommie was like vinegar with honey —not at all disagreeable, but decidedly tart: the exlibrarian, in a wholly different style, applied a wholly different and much higher standard, and something of the Christian peeped out here and there. I confess a strong predilection for the latter. There is some talk of publishing these lectures collected when the series is complete ] if it be done, I would advise your read era to buy; they are of more than ephemeral worth. Parliamentary privilege seems deter-

mined to penetrate everywhere—Supreme, County, and Police Courts. No sooner is the Glass case gone home (we got safely rid of it per last mail, and I hope it well never come back), containing a windy nothing in its fragile sides, than another is manufactured for onr inspection. Mr Stutt has got himself into trouble, or somebody else has got him there, or he has got somebody else there—nobody quite understands which way it is yet; but, at any rate, the way to get him out of it seems rather odd. The Government have undertaken to prosecute Mr Ross. Half the Press is crying out “ Unjust” at the Ministry, and the other half “ You scoundrel ” at Mr Ross—according as their proclivities are Ministerial or Opposition. Mr Ross, it seems, sent to the Commissioner of Lands a statutory declaration, made by a Mr Mills, in which Mr Stutt was accused of complicity in a land job. Mr Mills cannot be convicted of perjury, because our late Attorney-General, with his accustomed admirable management, in consolidating the law, contrived to bungle it, the penalties heretofore attaching to false declarations having been repealed, and no others substituted. A mere falsehood is not, of course, a legal offence; and Mills’s declaration is not proved to be false : so Mr Mills goes scot free. But Mr Ross, who took what appears to simple, straightforward folks the proper step to have the matter investigated, is not only thwarted in that apparently laudable desire, but is put to a criminal bar to answer for publishing a “false defamatory libel ”on Mr Stutt! Perhaps this is good law; but it looks strange when one seeks for justice. Other members are implicated as well as Mr Jstutt in Mills’s declaration; but nothing has yet been done, so far as I know, to prosecute Ross for libelling them. How provoking it is that people will persist in thinking one’s best thoughts before one hits them oneself! I fancied I had struck out an original idea about velocipedes in my last to you, and three days ago, as I was turning over the Scientific American, which I have not seen for six months or more, I found in the last number of it the very suggestion I throw out. I have not yet made up my mind whether I shall consider this as a striking coincidence of genius at opposite ends of the earth, or a characteristic instance of American audacity in appropriating my property. But no one may be judge in his own cause, so I leave your readers to decide.