POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. 



'43' 



climb should get his foot upon the ladder. In all the colonies, except Queensland and 

 Western Australia, there are local universities. All tin: universities are well equipped 

 with educational apparatus, and each has a full staff of competent professors. At 

 Melbourne and at Sydney there are medical schools, in which the number of students 

 is annually increasing. The latest development in the direction of the higher education 

 of women is the establishment of a woman's college in connection with the Sydney 

 University. The Sydney University, which was incorporated in 1851, has a roll of nearly 

 eight hundred students, and receives noble support every year from the Government, 

 and the list of private benefactors includes the late John Henry Challis, whose beq 

 amounted to ,200,000. There are three affiliated colleges St. Paul's (Anglican), St. 

 John's (Roman Catholic), and St. Andrew's (Presbyterian). 



The affiliated colleges correspond in some measure to the colleges within the 

 Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In the colonies they belong to the various 

 denominations, and are aided by the State. Some of these collegiate buildings have 

 been erected out of funds provided partly by the State and partly by subscriptions, and 

 in one notable instance that of the Ormond College, in Melbourne the expense has 

 been borne by the munificent liberality of one man. The interests of general education 

 and culture in the colonies receive attention at the hands of the State in various ways 

 other than through the instruction 

 given in primary and higher schools. 

 Schools of Arts or Mechanics' 

 Institutes, as they are sometimes 

 called have been widely established 

 throughout all the colonies, so that 

 nearly every Australian township 

 throughout the Continent can now 

 boast of its local institution of this 

 kind, where lectures are given, and 

 educational influences of a popular 

 kind regularly brought to bear. 

 Each such institute has its public 

 library, aided in New South Wales 

 by a judicious system of book- 

 lending on the part of the State. Free public libraries are found in the chief metro- 

 politan cities, those of Sydney and Melbourne being admirable institutions of their kind, 

 and noble testimonials to the intellectual curiosity and literature-loving tastes of the 

 people as a whole. In Sydney, besides the Public Library proper, there is an efficient 

 lending-branch, from which the public are allowed to borrow books without cha 

 subject only to the rules of the institution. It is from this lending library that the 

 provincial Schools of Arts are from time to time provided with parcels of books, in 

 addition to their own stock. These parcels are renewed when done with, and so a 

 continual interchange of literature is kept up even with the outlying districts of the colony. 

 Not the least of the active educational agencies of the Australian Colonies are the 

 technical schools that flourish and carry out an excellent work in many of the larger 



THE SCOTCH COLLEGE, MELBOUKNK. 



