THE CITY OF MELBOURNE. 



477 



Leaving the Cemetery and turning to the southward, a short walk across tin- Colic-.- 

 Crescent leads straight to the fine University Reserve ; this comprehends within its limits 

 an area of a hundred acres, forty of which have been set apart for the uses of the 

 institution, and sixty as sites for Church of England, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, 

 Wesleyan and other Colleges, and also for a recreation-ground. The University is 

 indebted for its existence mainly to the efforts of the late Sir Redmond Harry and 

 other public-spirited colonists, at a time when the Victorian Treasury was overflowing with 

 money, and the great mass of the community had neither the leisure nor the inclina- 

 tion to bestow the slightest attention upon any but material pursuits. Thanks to the 



TIIK METHODIST LADIES COLLEGE, HAWTHORN. 



personal influence of these gentlemen, and the sympathies of a Government composed of 

 men who had been college-bred, the Legislature was induced to grant a block of land, 

 a sum of money and an endowment for a University, which commenced its career in 

 1855 with four professors and just four times that number of students, and is now 

 looked up to as their Alma Mater by upwards of two thousand under-graduates. 



The University Buildings, covering three sides of a quadrangle, have been some- 

 what dwarfed by the edifices which have grown up around them. One of the hand- 

 somest of these is the Wilson Hall, which owes its existence to the munificence of Sir 

 Samuel Wilson, who appropriated the sum of thirty thousand pounds the accruing 

 interest on which eventually raised it to nearly forty thousand pounds to the foundation 

 of a hall, one hundred and forty feet long, fifty feet wide, and upwards of eighty feet 



