I ISO 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



which are both an ornament to the place and a picturesque feature in the landscape. 

 Nor can we overlook the fine plantation of trees which engirdles the city proper and 

 constitutes what is known as the Town Belt. It proclaims both the wisdom and the 

 appreciation of the beautiful in nature and art which possessed those who were privi- 

 leged to lay the original foundations of this flourishing seat of industry. 



And this reflection at once starts the mind upon a consideration of the strange and 

 romantic genesis of "The Cathedral City." It was intended to be a very exclusive place 

 a kind of poetic Arcadia for the younger sons of the English nobility, where, under the 

 benediction of the Established Church, they were to preside over large landed estates, 

 to be farmed by a grateful yeomanry who should look up to them with feudal sub- 

 missiveness. The Anglican Church was to have supreme dominion over spiritual affairs, 

 and middle-class society was to be graciously 

 allowed to furnish the merchants and shop- 

 keepers of the new colony. In fine, Canterbury 

 was to be a -specimen slice from the English 

 commonwealth with all its characteristic strata, 

 from the spiritual and temporal aristocracy at 



9 



the top to the hard toilers at the base. It was ^ ] 



HIGH STREET, CHRISTCHURCH. 



a very pretty scheme on paper for those who designed it, but it was foreign to the 

 democratic genius of Anglo-Saxon colonization, and was therefore quietly discarded, when 

 the settlers came to realize the impossibility of setting up, in their new home, the kind of 

 impcrinm in impcrio which the promoters of the enterprise had contemplated. But traces 

 of the original leaven are -still to be met with in Christchurch. Its "society" is said to 

 !>< more exclusive than elsewhere, and tries to conform itself to olcl-fashioned predilections 

 for caste distinctions ; the possession of a cathedral having its dean and chapter, in addition 

 to a bishop who is recognized as the Primate of the colony, keeps alive a decided 

 flavouring of High Chtirchism ; and finally the streets retain the nomenclature which 

 they derive from Anglican bishoprics throughout the world Hereford, Cashel, Lichfield, 

 Durham, Gloucester, St. Albans, Tuam, Armagh, Montreal, Colombo, Madras, Antigua, 

 Barbadoes, and so on. The " Canterbury Pilgrims," as the first settlers termed them- 



