BRITANNIA TO AUSTRALIA.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 2, Issue 69, 27 April 1868, Page 102

BRITANNIA TO AUSTRALIA.

* .*-•*-. • . 25th Jan.) “ . . Mt : pear, Daughter,—You .have come .out.,, You .haye* been presented to my Sailor Prince, have pleased your old mother vastly by your splendid celebration' of this, one of -the greatest events in your life; and 1 she is eager to offer you, her thanks' and congratulations. ; . .

I hear you are a fine, handsome lass, with a bush of golden hair, blooming and buxom, who have not yet done growings—figure rather fuller than mine,,but features much the same. I hope the .family likeness will be preserved many centuries and,cycles to come, and that when you are as old as I am you may look as well as I do, and have as few wrinkles and furrows, as, after all my years and trials, my time beaten visage shows. So young, too! only four score! fog Sydney will keep her. eightieth birthday this very year. lam conscious that when I was your age I was not able to. give balls and banquets, or dazzle with transparencies and illuminations (piping times for your gas-fit-ters,) or breed mayors and corporations, or erect exhibition-buildings as big as your old friend Westminster Hall. lam afraid I was subsisting on acorns and berries, and painting myself a warm blue, and going and coming nude ,as your own aborigines. So spread, so developed at 80, what will you not be at 800. You are the superb young beauty, the rose on your cheek, the brilliant in your eye, full of life and expectation, with many squires to hold up your train of cloth of gold, and a long and triumphant career before you. lam the mature matron, with : a silver thread here and there in my glossy hair, and a line or two on my ample brow, but handsome and stately still, proud of my bonny daughter, proud to be. told that she resembles her mother, wondering whether she will make the great conquest I have made, or stand amidst the affluence of possessions that I command, and wishing ' her with heart aiid voice all the happiness I have known, without a tithe of my suffering, or a tenth of my sorrow.

My daughter, do. not listen to those who will tell yon that I have seen my best days, and that there is no prospect for me but decrepitude and decay. I mean to be the Methuselah of nations, the evergreen of kingdoms. I have no intention at present of dismantling London Bridge, or converting St. Paul’s into a pietu resque ruin. I mean to live to see your future prosperity as far exceed your present as does that forlorn time of Cook and Banks from which our own is separated by such a scanty handful of years. You, in your turn, will have to colonise and emigrate, and you will bless me with lusty and vigorous; grandchildren. Your stride will strengthen, your pace will quicken, but don’t make the running too soon, don’t go too fast.

You reserflible your mother in many things. Like her you have your Ministers, your Parliaments; your Speakers; your Rechabites, your Druids, your Odd Fellows. You would not be a woman if you had not your Opposition; you vrould j hot be my child if you were without y.our jobs and blunders. I doubt pot that you have your Usher of the 'Black Rod, your Beadles, and your Waits. lam sorry that you have no Lord Mayor, but I hope, as some compensation, that you are not vestry-ridden. I notice that you have what I cannot afford, your “ Free Gardeners,” and “ Free Banquet.” Send me the Gardeners’ address, and some dinner tickets, will you?’ and a case or two of your beef (without hone.) would not come amiss; Are your Metropolitan streets,as dirty as mine ? In the hustling thoroughfares of Melbourne, or Sydney, or any other of your several capitals, do yon take a human life nearly every other day in the yeaiy as: indifference and stupidity’doiff London?; Are you old erioiigh to haye .yesfod interests and a National Debt ?

In same points T ' cannot compete with you-iEi E possess-no • marsupial creaturesifor-an active young Duke; to stalk, ( (partridges"^ ! atlS|ndring-, bam,: and/pheasants at b'sborue, will be tame spdrt after-elephants rit the Gape, and kangaroos xn the bush) ;' I cahnot emulate ; your emus, except, perhaps, in thel. enpfosfofes|.pf, the^Eoqlogical cue of my domestic animals; there are

no auriferous diggings in Regent-street, and *at present I ha ve not heard of nuggets being picked in tlie'Strand by zealous agents .of : the Goldsmiths’ Company ; iny sheep-walks and cattle drives are mere toys and jplaythings compared with.'yours/ l you enjoyed a session of Parliament lasting exactly three-quarters -of an hour ; “ and not a single person was put into. lock-up that night for misbehaviour ” ' Bravo, Melbourne! and not a ; teetotal :popu* lation either. Hull; and Newcastle, and Nottingham,,and/other; towns of mine, of about, the same size as. Melbourne, mprk learn, and copy. But, my Daughter, we have one necessary of life in common ; there is one. great banner of which we both Hold a pole, and the blazon that sparkles upon it is Punch! •

I wish your geography was rather [simpler. My young men whose education has been carefully neglected—wealthy foundation schools, wealthy Universities; and so forth—complain that they are perplexed by Victoria, and New South) Wales, and QueensLand (is not all Australia Queensland ?J, and South Australia, and Western Australa, and Van Diemen’s Land, alias (convict-like—-I congratulate you on being free from that settlement on you) Tasmania, and" New Guinea, always staunch to the old Sovereign; and they would be relieved if you could fix on some one city as your capital, and cease to divide your favors between Melbourne, and Sydney, and Adelaide, and Ballarat,. and, Brisbane, and Perth, and Hobart Town, whose respective geographical positions they find great difficulty in accurately discriminating. Send me home my young salt of a Duke, my “ Queen piccaninny,” when he has had enough of boomerangs and waddies, whoops and corroborees, unless you determine to place him on a throne of your own virgin gold, as Australia’s first King, to be, .perhaps, the second Alfred the great. T don’t advise him to change his epaulets for a crowu. . . - . •. r .

I must not keep the ; mail longer waiting. Only a word about those rumors "frbm time to time blown to- us ;oe’r the sea, that when yon are, a. little older you mean to leave me j arid set up for yourself in life. I have no wish to part company, I should like to keep you and all the rest of my children by my side all my days. But; if .there should come to you that aspiration for freedom which dignifiesalluoble youth, though there may, though there must be sorrow at my heart, there will be no feeling, of displeasure at your independence, no thought of resistance to your wishes. Floreat Australia !: Your affectionate Mother- Country, Britannia. P.S. (Woman-like) I have" addressed you by your usual , name,: but properly, you know, you ought to be styled Australasia. So). let it be JPfo* reat Australasia !> Have you any pet name ? What say you to Kangarooia ?