her possessions," less harassed by internal distractions-Welsh riots-Scotch ecclesiastical differences, and the perpetual thunders at her very threshold of Irish repeal agitation, that she would be more at leisure to listen to our wrongs, and less disinclined to redress them. And what indeed is it that we seek? Not that she should accord us pecuniary help, as she has done with regard to a sister colony. We ask not for 150,000l. as a loan, afterwards to accept it as a boon from her treasury. We seek that our adopted country may be placed on the same footing-may be made equal with her other colonial dependencies. We seek redress and protection from aggression and spoliation. We seek in the open space, in the free air of our land room for the expansion of our energies. We would take advantage of, and turn to the best account, our fortunate and commanding maritime position ; we would develop to the utmost our many and extraordinary capabilities, pastoral, agricultural, and commercial !

Which of the colonies could then compete with us?

And, indeed, what would England lose by performing this act of justice and mercy towards Australia Felix? Not surely our filial regard, and that may be worth cultivating, for, though not a large we are most assuredly an attached and loyal community! One thing is certain-all our past colonial experience tends to one point, all the disasters which have assailed us-all the neglect which we have endured-all the difficulties through which we have struggled, impel us to one aim-in fact, all our rational expectations of future unshackled, unimpeded prosperity centre in three words-Separation from Sydney!

Melbourne, 1844.

HOMER AND HORACE READ AND ENJOYED BY A SHEPHERD IN AUSTRALIA.

A COLONIAL WONDER.

There are yet persons so little versant in the present order of things in this work-a-day world, as to consider, that if a man is "a scholar," he must also have a right to that other honourable addition-" a gentleman,"-taking the term gentleman in its ordinary acceptation: a gentleman and scholar, a man tolerably well-to-do in the world, and well educated. It does not however follow, as a natural consequence, that a person who has acquired a perfect knowledge of many languages, to say nothing of his natural capacity, or his other acquirements in science or art, it cannot be legitimately premised that such person

has been either rich, or "at ease in his possessions," or allied to or descended from any of the rich or great people of the earth.

Who is so dull as never to have heard the names of those poor rich men, Burns, Bloomfield, and Clare?-Not to know them argues little knowledge of what passes in the literary world. It is in fact too late now to iterate the truism that the lower, nay, lowest order of society, has enriched the world with poets, sculptors, and painters, masters in their art-men educated in the lap of adversity, who, from their childhood upwards have been made familiarly conversant with the kicks and cuffs of fortune-beings inherently inhaling

"The keen but wholesome air of poverty,

And drinking at the well of homely life."

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Wilson, the Scottish author of that facetious ballad, "Wattie and Meg," the great American ornithologist, was a poor weaver of Paisley; Burns was a ploughman; Bloomfield a farmer's boy. Who is there at all a reader of poetry, that has not heard of the "Queen's Wake," "Mador of the Moor," and Queen Hynde?"-the wonderful productions of a Scottish poet,—not marvellous, because that when Allan Cunningham, himself a poet of humble life, paid him a visit, he found him a ragged and barefooted lad, tending the sheep of Mr. Harkness, of Queensbury Hill. No! wonderful alone for their extraordinary development of kingly genius. The Ettrick Shepherd, their author, was, like Shakspeare and Scott, one of nature's intellectual alchemists, turning by virtue of his inward illumination

"The meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold."

From the days of Adam the gardener in Paradise to our own, there have been some remarkable men sprung from humble life. Smith and Clarke, his namesakes, not the least of them and in the present day, in my own knowledge, there is an old Northumberland drover, whose son, a village pedagogue, has added to his store of other learning, seven languages. Still this Adam Little is less than little compared with the recently famous American devourer of languages, Elihu Burritt-a man who would have been a valuable acquisition as an interpreter at Babel.

I see in the first number of the Port Phillip Magazine that some shepherd or hut-keeper is accused of having in his bushdwelling the works of Homer, &c. This, the writer seems to think a very strange affair-as though the possessor or enjoyer of such works was out of his proper element, or situated there by a combination of circumstances unsought for on his part.

Now, I should think, that if any thoughtful or meditative personage were to select his own vocation, as most natural to his mind or habits, it would be hut-keeping or shepherding.

Nay, furthermore, we should scarcely be surprised at a shepherd of all people producing something admirable in this way as an emanation of his own genius-like Moses keeping the sheep of Jethro, his father-in-law, in the land of Midian, and composing the Book of Job by way of amusement. It is very possible that the world is indebted to the solitariness and tranquillity of the pastoral life for a considerable portion of its most valuable imaginatory literature. It is more than probable that many men have been, in towns especially, so occupied by business and pleasure, so thoroughly absorbed by the constantly recurring cares, so clogged by trammels of habit, as never to have had leisure to withdraw themselves from the outward to the inward world of mind; nor have ever made the discovery that the material of their mental faculties was of more than ordinary quality. This we fancy can never happen to the shepherd. Shepherds indeed can produce persons of their ancient and honourable house of some note: David will be allowed a little merit as author of the Psalms-the keeper of "those few sheep in the wilderness." The Chaldean shepherds, the wise. men of the East, knew something of astronomy; and last, not least, one whom we have before mentioned in that simple vocation, has astonished the world with some productions “ that it will not willingly let die."

Allan Cunningham, in a most beautiful lyrical poem, says,

that

"The husbandman

Walks hand in hand with God."

Moreover, as Cowper declares "God made the country," we should be well aware that there will be found some of his noblest children in it-men of erect spirits, full of the truest inspiration, familiar with whatever lives and moves in the souls of their fellow men, nor alone conversant with the inward powers and graces of the generative spirit—but gathering to themselves the glory of the visible universe, living in the light of suns and stars, and adorning themselves with the gems and flowers of the earth.

Away, then, with the nonsense of soul and situation; away with all boundary lines and shackles; what has the free human soul to do with the ordinary modes and demarcations of conventional society! A king and a beggar may both of them read

the works of Cervantes or Shakspeare, very properly both of them, but the quantum of instruction or enjoyment will depend on the capacity and mood of mind in each of them, and it may so happen that the beggar may have the advantage. It is not the situation, but the soul, which makes us what we are. The question is, what are our capabilities? what is our industry? Are we all naturally alike? There are who assert as much! that all souls have the same intellectual dimensions, only modified by variety of circumstances, education, &c.; phrenology, in which I have not myself entire faith, with these people is nothing. Our bodily organisation has, in their opinion, no effect on our mental capacity.

Whilst I see every variety of beauty and gracefulness in trees, plants and flowers; endless variety in the songs of birds, both in compass of voice and richness of modulation; whilst every human countenance varies in form and expression-I must entertain another opinion. There is a difference in everything external in form and quality; and it would be little short of a miracle were the spiritual capacity, the intellectual faculties alike in all men. That few are what they might be, is a fact: we neglect our own powers, or are too soon self-satisfied. Yet, with the greatest application, Goldsmith could never have written Macbeth or Hamlet; nor could Shakspeare have composed the Vicar of Wakefield; still both of them are poets-both dramatic writers, first-rate in their own departments. Nature has a more wonderful staff than Prospero; the beings of her creation vary more widely than Ariel and Caliban.

Thanks unto Nature! Thanks to the one illimitable and eternal Spirit-the fountain of all order and variety, for the diversity of mental endowments- for the endless flow and variety of thought-for the heavenly revelation upon earth of intellectual beauty, not alone vouchsafed to the rich or powerful, unto kings or to princes, but spread banquetwise before all men. Moses and David, ages ago, and Homer and Horace, sang admirably, that the weavers and shepherds of their day and generation might not lack their delight!

TIMIDITY OF BRITISH CAPITALISTS ON ARRIVING IN THE COLONY,

Railroads are carried safely across the deepest bogs and marshes; but they swallow up a great deal of material before there is anything like solidity of surface. The Port Phillipians

S

are somewhat weary of casting in; they think there is no bottom to our Slough of Despond. Some capitalists from the mothercountry, too, like Faint-Heart, after half-circumnavigating the globe, seeing how many are stuck fast in the middle, and some get out again terribly bemired and dispirited, have set their faces steadfastly again towards England; and not without reason, for the vested property of the colony is not safe: there is extreme caution amongst the monied people; there has been a lesson and a warning written up, like that on the Babylonian wall, by the viewless hand. Who, until stability is in some measure given to colonial property, will again venture their capital in it? Whilst the home government, like the moon, acts upon the sea of our prosperity, there will be extraordinary ebbs and flows. Whilst Lord John Russell, Lord Stanley, and the Board of Colonial Commissioners, keep tampering with the Land Sale Regulations, "colonial property will continue at sufficiently low prices. There needs no further evidence of this than two recent land sales-one at Melbourne, the other at Twofold Bay-one allotment only being sold on each occasion. The writer in a Sydney paper, who gives an account of the land sale at Twofold Bay, exclaims against one pound per acre as too much for bush land as quite a prohibition. It may be so. Still, if not worth that, it is worth nothing, and had better remain unsold. All that the colonies require, is to be protected against continual alterations in the price. The home government—

"turns an easy wheel

That sets sharp racks at work to pinch and peel."

Is the effect of the "Ruination Bill" worn off? No! it will not soon be forgotten that when speculation was at its height in Port Phillip, when land was sold at 427. per acre, only two miles from Melbourne, that the Governor of New South Wales received instructions from the home authorities to sell the adjoining allotments for one pound per acre! Such instructions were not carried into effect. No; but they had their effect. Criminals under sentence of death, may be respited-the sentence may hang over them—and they may die of apprehension before the arrival of a reprieve. Such events are upon record. No person could return to the land banquet with a safe appetite, whose knees had smitten together at Lord John Russell's “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.' We, as a colony, were weighed in the political scales, and found wanting our prosperity was at its height -our glory was at an end-and we must go into captivity to bankruptcy and ruin! After such a volcanic explosion, the Port