440 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



at least of its most active functions. Half a dozen banking institutions conduct their 

 business in its immediate vicinity. The principal insurance companies have established 

 their head-quarters close by, and the leading auctioneers are nearly all to be found in 

 the same neighbourhood. Stock and station agents, share and produce brokers have their 

 offices within a radial line of a hundred yards or so drawn from the corner of Queen 

 Street, and the whole district may be said to throb with the quick currents of 

 commerce and finance, from ten o'clock in the morning until four in the afternoon. 

 Outside the Exchange congregate the dealers and speculators in shares and scrip, who 

 cling to the sunny side of the street for one half of the year, and drift over the way 

 for the sake of the shade afforded by the Bank of New South Wales, during the 

 summer months. From eleven to one, the auction rooms are populous with a crowd of 

 bidders and curious idlers, and the voices of the salesmen are audible above the hum 

 and the buzzing of the motley company gathered around the counters whereon is 

 displayed the merchandise which is being disposed of with such remarkable celerity. All 

 the world has been laid under contribution for the articles of utility or ornament that 

 pass beneath the hammer in these rooms from year's end to year's end. Carved furni- 

 ture, carpets and silken fabrics from Indian bazaars ; bronzes, porcelain and lacquer- 

 ware from Japan ; marble statuary from Florence and Pisa ; ceramic ware from Worcester, 

 Dresden, Limoges and Vienna ; pianos from Paris and Berlin ; wines and spirits from 

 Bordeaux ; cargoes of tea from China ; ironware from the north of England ; and the 

 various products of the looms of Lancashire, Belfast, Mulhouse and Paisley flow through 

 the auction rooms of Collins Street West in an apparently perennial stream, thence to 

 be distributed through a hundred minor channels. Book sales almost invariably take 

 place on a Saturday morning, and now and then an auction of choice pictures at 

 Messrs. Gemmell and Tuckett's held always in the afternoon draws together a little 

 circle of art lovers, and the prices realized denote pretty accurately whether the times 

 are prosperous or otherwise. 



Each auction room has its own clientele, and its own little group of brokers who 

 buy on commission. For there are specialists in this, as in the medical profession. 

 There are the salesmen of tropical produce, quick to detect minute differences of colour 

 and granulation in sugar, and to discriminate delicate nuances of fragrance and flavour 

 in tea. There are others who are experts in textile fabrics, and others to whom the 

 name, uses and value of every article of domestic plenishing are as familiar as house- 

 hold words ; some who know all varieties of timber " with a most learned quality ; " 

 and a few who, taking advantage of the earth-hunger of large classes of the community, 

 have surrounded the city with suburban Edens, Arcadian vales, hills commanding wide 

 and matchless prospects, secluded glens like that inhabited by Prince Rasselas, sea-side 

 retreats more beautiful than those haunted by the syrens, and bosky dells worthy for 

 elves and fays to hold their revels in. The vendors of these have brought all the 

 resources of a lively fancy to bear on the composition of advertisements like those of 

 Mr. Puff, in "The Critic," which that ingenious gentleman "crowded with panegyrical 

 superlatives." At some seasons of the year certain of the auction rooms are transformed 

 into green bowers. Young orange and lemon trees from the shores of Port Jackson, 

 ferns from New Zealand, flowering plants of all kinds from near and distant nurseries, 



