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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 82, 9 April 1877, Page 4

Melbourne from an American Point op View.— Mr Wilson, of the circus, dose not seem to have been very favourably impressed by the climate of Victoria, while he is of opinion that the citizens of Melbourne believe this place, and not Boston, to be the " hub of the universe." In a letter to the Alia California, he eays:— "lf you do not begin by making up your toind that Melbourne ia the finest city in creation, and the only place in the world worth liyiog in, you are not likely So understand it's inhabitants or to enter. into the spirit of their doings. It is a good place enough—well laid out in broad, straight streets upon the American plan, with fine public buildings, .five or six magnificent,- wellcultivated, open parks, and a busy, bustling, energetic population. It is this, and morej but at its beat it never ia or can be to a traveller what it is to the dweller within its bounds. To the natives it ia paradise, perfect and unalloyed, without flaw, fault, or blemish, and after a few weeks spent in the city, you begin to wonder whether your eyes, or those of your ho3t, are out oi gear. It never freezes here, consequently the climate is, you are calmly assured, (he finest in the world. It ia true that when tho wind blows, which is nearly all day long, four days out. of five, you cannot see acroaa the street for tho dust storms, and when the wind doea not blow, the sun pours down its pitiless rays until you wiah that you could sit up to your neck in an ice tub. It ia also true that when it is not scorching iho clothes on ycur back into tinder, nod baking the brains in your skull, it rains in torrents or hails in tons. But it is the finest climate iv tl c world, the people say that live all their lives in it, and after all, who should know if they do not? 1 These remarks grated rather hastily on the patriotic feelings of the editor of the Melbourne Argus, and caused him to remark:^ Mt is comforting to reflect that the foolish eeif-complaceney thus attributed to us ia peculiar. to Australia, and ia never to be met with in «Dy part of the United States — not even in San Francisco 1"