AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2252, 26 July 1870, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

{From the Australasian.) A hostile majority in the Queensland Assembly, led by MrMacalister, has pronounced against the Government and in favor of protection ; and the defeated Ministry have asked for a dissolution, in order that the country may pronounce a definite opinion upon the question of free trade and progress, or res' riction and retrogression. Mr Grant has done the right thing, at the right time, in the right way. The letter which he addressed to the Chief Secretary, requesting that gentleman not to submit proposed vote of L7,Q00 to the Assembly, will raise Mr Grant in the estimation of the country, and will greatly strengthen hia claims upon popular gratitude and respect. No better proof could be furnished of the light in which this patriotic act of selfdenial is regarded out of doors than the fact that on the same evening Mr Grant’s letter was read in the Lower House, an influential central committee . was formed, compos 1 d of gentlemen of all shades of political opinion, with a view to raising a suitable testimonial to the public services of the exmember for Avoca, and L9OO was collected on the spot.

Nothing lias been beard of late with respect to the unemployed, excepting that they are raising the sum of L 5,000, with which to start a daily paper. A favourable change in the weather has led to renewed activity in the building trades, and a few days since, the first sod was turned of the North-Eastern Railway, the construction of one section of which will no doubt absorb a considerable quantity of labor. Last week the Government accented a tender for some repairs to the facjado of the Parliamentary Library. It has only been erected ! a few years, and it was originally proposed to face it with Italian marble. This would have been the most economic course, and the most advantageous in an architectural point of view; but a great clamour was raised by the “native industry ” party, and it was dbjected to, moreover, on the ground that the marble would be hewn, .and dressed, and shipped, by “Papists.” Consequently, a friable sandstone from a local quarry was made yso of, and the fagade now threatens to fall to cureless ruin. As it has to be patched up or replaced by day labor, we are enabled to give, for the information of curious readers the wages rates at which the tender was accepted. These are per day :—Mason, 11a ; labourers, 7s fid ; stone sawyer, 10s 6d; stone carver, 14s ; carpenters, 10s ; bricklayers, lls ; plasterars, 11s; plumber, 10s fid : slaters, 10s fid. Of course out of these rates the contractor has to make his ordinary business profit, but they still afford an indi* cation of what is regarded as the market price of an eight hours’ days work in, these avocations.

Arrangements have been perfected for establishing a school of paintiag in connexion with the Victorian Museum and Gallery of Art in this city, and the choice of an instructor has fallen upon Mr Eugene von Guerard, whose abilities as an artist are well and widely known. A certain degree of proficiency will be demanded upon the part of students seeking admission, and the numerous public drawing schools, or schools of design, as they arc erroneously called, which have been opened in the suburbs of Melbourne, will no doubt supply the superior institution with pupils in course of time. At present we have in Melbourne several young and self-instructed painters, who have begun at the wrong end of the profession ; and are engrged in multiplying passable copies of good pictures, without having acquired so much as the alphabet of the art,

Knowing nothing of drawing, or anatomy,, of linear or aerial perspective, of the laws of composition, or the science of colour, they set upas ar'ists when they are only qualified to be considered as artificers, and will have .to unlearn what little they know before they are enabled to commence a course of really beneficial instruction. To counteract this evil will he one of the objects, and no doubt one of the results, of the proposed school of painting; one great drawback to the success of which, however, is the absence from our public gallery of any specimens of the old masters.