AN AMERICAN ON MELBOURNE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4998, 31 March 1877, Page 1 (Supplement)

AN AMERICAN ON MELBOURNE.

The Argus says:—Mr. Wilson, of the circus, does not seem to have been very favorably 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 Alta California, he says“ If you do not begin by making up your mind that Melbourne is the finest city in creation, and the only place in the world worth living in, you are not likely to understand its 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, well-culti-vated, open parks, and a busy, bustling, energetic population, It is all this, and more ; hut at its best it never is or can be to a traveller what it is to the dweller within its bounds. To the natives it is paradise, perfect and unalloyed, without flaw, fault, or blemish, and after a tew weeks spent in the city, you begin to wonder whether your eyes, or those of your host, are out of gear. It never freezes here, consequently the climate is, you are calmly assured, the finest in the world. It is true that when the wind blows, which is nearly all day long, four days out of five, you cannot see across the street for the dust storms, and when the wind does not blow, the sun pours down its pitiless rays until you,wish you could sit up to your neck in an ice tub. It is also true that when it is not scorching the clothes on your back into tinder, and baking the brains in your skull, it rains in torrents or hails in tons. But it is the finest city in the world, the people say who live all their lives in it, and, after all, who should know if they do not!” It is comforting to reflect that tho foolish selfcomplacency thus attributed to us is peculiar to Australia, and is never to be met with in any part of the United States—not even in San Francisco,