44 6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



the occupants of those chambers come trooping in from all points of the compass, but 

 chiefly from the railway stations in Flinders Street, carrying brief-bags and wearing in 

 many cases an unmistakably legal expression on their countenances. They are for the 

 most part men of spare habit, with a lack of colour in their cheeks, an early tendency 

 to wrinkles, baldness and indigestion ; intellectually acute, physically delicate, and addicted 

 owing to the nature of their occupation and their daily familiarity with the seamy 

 side of human nature to rather pessimistic views of mankind in general, and of that 

 section of it amongst which they live and breathe and have their being in particular. 

 During term time the relations between Temple Court, Shelborne, Normanby and Eldon 

 Chambers, and indeed the whole neighbourhood, and the Supreme Court are close and 

 continuous. Clerks and messengers seem to oscillate like so many pendulums between 

 the two neighbourhoods ; and when the courts rise at the close of the afternoon it 

 requires but little skill in physiognomy to determine which are the plaintiffs and which 

 the defendants in civil actions ; which the friends and relations of men and women on 

 their trial for criminal offences on the one hand, and the barristers who hold the briefs, 

 and the attorneys who have prepared them, on the other. Both classes of practitioners 

 seem to straighten themselves up and to cast off their " nighted colour," as Hamlet was 

 directed to do. The task is over for the day of 



Proving by reason, in reason's despite, 

 That right is wrong and wrong is right, 

 And white is black and black is white, 



and the legal gentlemen go home to their suburban villas, or drop in for an hour or 

 two at their clubs ; or take a hand at whist with some neighbours at Kew, or Haw- 

 thorn, or Elsternwick ; and Chancery Lane and the Supreme Court are forgotten until 

 after the breakfast things have been cleared away on the following morning. 



The site of the General Post Office, at the north-east corner of Bourke and 

 Elizabeth Streets, was previously occupied by a structure erected in primitive and 

 pastoral times. It was squat and shabby, inconspicuous and inconvenient, constructed of 

 weather-board, and it consisted of one storey only. It was haunted by rats ; and a pool 

 of stagnant water, which had accumulated underneath the building, told so disastrously 

 on the health of the officials that promotion was comparatively rapid in that department 

 of the Public Service. A small cupola, containing a clock, rose a few feet above the 

 low roof on the south or Bourke Street side of the edifice, and along the street- 

 frontage was a not very broad verandah, slightly elevated above the footpaths, and 

 standing a little way back. This verandah was applied to more uses than those for 

 which it was originally intended. It was a place of rendezvous for friends, and a lounge 

 for vagrants. Tramps would select it as a dormitory during the summer months, and it 

 shared with the old Eastern Market the distinction of beinir selected as a tribune by 



O J 



popular orators, whence they fulminated their denunciations of the more prosperous 

 classes, who were solemnly arraigned for the high crime and misdemeanour of having 

 been lucky, or clever, or frugal. In the early days all new-comers had their letters from 

 the Old Country directed to them at the Melbourne Post Office, and when the monthly 

 mail arrived the verandah and its approaches were thronged. No sooner were the slides 

 at the delivery windows lifted than a scene of confusion and excitement ensued. Men's 



