THE CITY OF MELBOURNE. 



495 



support, and he has, during his short stay in the colony, exhibited a special interest in 

 art, music, the drama, literature and science. No stranger honourably identified with 

 either has visited the colony, either in his own or his predecessor's term of office, 

 without receiving some gratifying assurance that intellectual superiority or artistic skill 

 of any kind, associated 

 with personal worth, 

 meets with a prompt 

 and graceful recogni- 

 tion at Government 

 I louse ; while the in- 

 fluence of vice-regal 

 example, in this and 

 many other respects, 

 has had a beneficial 

 effect upon the whole 

 of Victorian society, 

 which naturally takes 

 its tone from that 

 which is the colonial 

 substitute for a Court. 

 Melbourne, origi- 

 nally the name of a 

 modest village in the 

 county of Derbyshire, 

 in England, has by 

 colonial transplantation 

 been promoted to rank 

 in the gazetteers of the 

 future as one of the 

 great cities of the 

 world. It owes this 

 destiny to the fact that 

 it was the place from 



1 ,.J'I ,',,'i .. I..,;- I'lT.i.lJ : : ml.! ,l|,':l ,;l|iK: .. i,' ..! , ,'!,. !. .Inl!,!!.:'. i'JII ,'.h IK,!: ,11 1111, '!| ' ,,i i . I I 



which Lord Melbourne THE YARRA ABOVE THE BOTAMCAL GARDENS. 



derived his title as a 



baron of the realm, for as he was Prime Minister of Great Britain when the city was 

 founded in 1836, the infant metropolis honoured itself by adopting his titular name. He 

 played a not unimportant part in the politics of his day. \Yilliam the Fourth called him 

 the "great gentleman," and Her Majesty Queen Victoria has gracefully acknowledged that 

 to his wise counsels and loyal assistance she was under deep obligations in her earlier 

 days for qualifying her for discharging the duties devolving on her as the constitutional 

 sovereign of a free people. He little thought when filling so distinguished a position as 

 the practical governor of an Empire, and the political teacher of a queen whose reign was 

 to last for more than half a century, that his own name would be preserved less by the 



I. '..'i. in i, i .; 



