430 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



security with amplitude and commodiousness, in Florence, Pisa, Siena, Bergamo, Pistoia, 

 and other old places. 



Returning to Flinders Street, and following an easterly course towards the Fitzroy 

 Gardens, the steep ascent of Russell Street is reached so named after the statesman 

 who was a conspicuous figure in English politics at the time Melbourne was founded 

 the visitor climbs to the crown of the hill, from which the Burke and Wills statue has 

 been recently removed in order to avoid obstructing the tram-way traffic, and pauses to 

 survey the four vistas which open out at the intersection of this thoroughfare with one 

 of the main arteries of the city. Looking eastward the eye is led through an avenue 

 of young elm trees and sycamores above which, on the right-hand side of Collins 

 Street, tower the two cupolas of the Freemasons' Club to the arcaded facade of the 

 Treasury. Nearly opposite the rendezvous of the craft is the Melbourne Club ; the 

 earliest institution of the kind in the city, the most hospitable and the most exclusive. 

 To the westward the far-stretching perspective is terminated by the long, low roof of 

 the Railway Station in Spencer Street, seen above the rising ground of Collins Street 

 West ; and the architectural lines on either side, irregular in themselves, are on one 

 side of the street broken up still more 'by the spire of St. Enoch's Church now used 

 as an Assembly Hall by the Presbyterian body by the high mansard roof of the 

 Premier Building Society, by the tall cupola of the City of Melbourne Bank, and by 

 the twin pavilions of the Union Bank ; and on the other by the lofty fa9ades of the 

 Equitable Co-operative Store, the Melbourne Athenaeum, immediately opposite the Argus 

 Office, and the Coffee Palace originally the Victorian Club. Beyond these rises the 

 clock-tower of the Town Hall, and in the far distance the turret of the English, 

 Scottish and Australian Chartered Bank at the corner of Queen Street. Southward, the 

 wooded domain of Government House, crowned by its campanile, rises from the bank 

 of the River ; and to the northward, the receding lines start from the Congregational 

 Church on the one hand, and the Scotch Church on the other ; the more notable 

 buildings beyond being the Temperance Hall, and the spacious and convenient premises 

 belonging to the Young Men's Christian Association. 



The two churches just mentioned occupy one of the finest sites in the city, and 

 are quite worthy of it. Upon the ground covered by that of the Congregationalists 

 formerly stood a mean and meagre structure, so destitute of architectural pretensions, 

 and so devoid of ecclesiastical significance, that it might have been mistaken for a small 

 penitentiary or a prison. It was, however, the first place of worship erected by the 

 Independent Denomination in Victoria, its foundation stone having been laid oi\ the 6th 

 of September, 1839, when the settlement was only four years old ; and those who had 

 assembled year after year for prayer and praise beneath its roof did not witness its 

 demolition without a pang ; for, howsoever ugly and incommodious it may have been, 

 it was associated in their minds with the struggles, the hardships and trials of their 

 daily lives in the early times, and with the often recurring question of the new-comer 

 and voluntary exile, " How shall we sing the songs of Zion in a strange land ?" But 

 the congregation had outgrown the capacity of the primitive building, which has now 

 been replaced by a church in which the architect has introduced a modification of the 

 Romanesque style so successfully applied to a similar purpose in Lombardy and else- 



