328 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



fondly remembered actors. Mr. and Mrs. George Coppin, Mr. and 

 Mrs. G. H. Kogers, and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Young took a firm 

 hold of the regard of the play-going public, and continued to 

 delight them for more than a generation afterwards. In later 

 years, when great theatrical stars were imported for the handsome 

 theatres subsequently built, they had all the advantage of a first- 

 class stock company to set them off. Some of those who came 

 heralded with great flourish of trumpets did not, in the opinion of 

 competent critics, equal a selected few of the local artists. For 

 Melbourne was early recognised in the profession as an exigeant 

 centre of dramatic criticism, and in later years has shown a pro- 

 nounced tendency to theatre-going, and a keen appreciation of the 

 best in the actor's art. 



It remains only to notice some of the limitations under which 

 the colony suffered, most of which it has long since outgrown. 

 Its remoteness from the world's metropolis could not be abridged, 

 but improvements in the means of communication seemed to have 

 been somewhat neglected. The average time occupied in the 

 transmission of mails was four months each way, and this tedious- 

 ness was frequently accentuated by the letters being carried to 

 Sydney and thence returned overland. In 1845 the Town Council 

 of Melbourne sent a petition to Sir George Gipps urging that the 

 mails from England, carried by vessels bound to Sydney, should 

 be dropped at the pilot station at Port Phillip Heads, but although 

 the Governor forwarded the petition to London no notice appears 

 to have been taken of it. One or two attempts to organise a 

 speedier mail service, in the early days of ocean navigation, failed 

 from lack of financial support, and from the various mischances 

 which beset novel enterprises. The Peninsular and Oriental 

 Company were running steamers to India, vid the Cape of Good 

 Hope, in 1844, and were not unwilling to establish a branch service 

 from one of their outposts to Sydney. But the jealousy of the 

 East India Company, which then absolutely dominated the trade 

 with the East, succeeded in blocking the proposal, and it was not 

 until the British Chambers of Commerce had stirred in the matter 

 by petition to Parliament that the opposition was overcome. By 

 the time arrangements were completed for the despatch of the 



