xxxiv Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



newspapers, but only of their literary quality ; and, basing 

 my assertion upon a good deal of experience, I say with 

 confidence, that the literary quality of the newspapers, in 

 Victoria at any rate, is, with exceptions of course, of a kind 

 upon which we may congratulate ourselves. Whatever 

 literary feeling there may be in Victorian society, therefore, 

 is to a large extent derived from, and is built upon, the 

 newspapers. We have proportionally a much larger number 

 of newspapers than they have in the old country. There are 

 hundreds of towns in England, of considerable size, that have 

 no public journal whatever; whereas in this colony, the very 

 smallest township has some kind of newspaper. There is 

 thus an extensive diffusion of information, and every member 

 of the community is indebted to the newspaper for a great 

 deal of the knowledge he possesses. 



But we also import books in great numbers from the old 

 countries of the world, and it is by no means exceptional, 

 nowadays, for persons of even moderate means to possess 

 libraries often of considerable size. It is true that not a few 

 persons of means that are much more than moderate, have 

 no libraries at all; and that of those who have them, some 

 never read them. The story is extant of a gentleman, 

 belonging to the extremely wealthy lower orders, who, 

 having been persuaded to include in the plan of a new house 

 he was building a library, ordered his books from England 

 by the ton. He said it simplified matters to send for two 

 tons. I myself have been in houses where the decorator had 

 carte blanche given him, but in which the library did not 

 number more than fifty volumes. 



For all this we are, by comparison, a reading people, and 

 as far as reading may induce the literary faculty, a writing 

 people. The letters that from time to time appear in the 

 newspapers, may be accepted in demonstration of this latter 

 proposition ; and they probably do not represent more than 

 a tithe of those actually written, I am not going to say that 

 all such letters indicate marked literary skill, but they 

 certainly represent a good deal of such skill, and some of 



