1444 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



the enterprise of their forefathers had laid the foundation. But although this process 

 of evolution was always going on, its results did not come either with the first or 

 the second generation. The continual influx of immigrants kept the colony for many 

 years in its initial stage. The demand in the new country was for employment rather 

 than for culture, and each decade brought its contribution of colonists who left the old 



land and sought the new, not so 



MMMMMBMjBiffiNjs^ much to find the comforts of life 



as its necessaries, and to seek 

 leave to toil for bread rather than 

 to enjoy those intellectual luxuries 

 of which literature and art are 

 the outcome. It would, however, 

 not be correct to assume that 

 amongst the new-comers to this 

 new land there were none pos- 

 sessed of great talents and high 

 culture. The history of our po- 

 litical institutions convince one of 

 the contrary. Leichhardt has borne 

 witness to the culture of many of 

 the early pioneers, whose stations 

 he visited on his overland journeys. 

 Sir Thomas Mitchell, the cele- 

 brated explorer, was a man of 

 varied learning, whose translation 

 of the Portuguese poet, Camoens, 

 is still consulted by scholars. Again, 

 there can be little either of liter- 

 ature or of art without a strong in- 

 spiration derived from national 

 pride and belief in a national 



future. Our first pioneers had so little, that one of the most admired productions of 

 Australian verse, " A Voice from the Bush " voices only a vain regret for the land 

 where the poet had his birthplace. As, moreover, the social conditions of the mother- 

 colony evolved themselves, the popular mind had enough to engage its attention in the 

 formation of its political and legal systems, in the development of its religious institu- 

 tions, in the adaptation of the machinery of State education to the wants of the 

 growing community, and, in general, in building up that semblance of nationality which 

 should one day grow into the empire, whose hopes and aspirations are beginning to fill 

 the dreams and nerve the efforts of Australian artists and authors. And until these various 

 interests had time to solidify themselves, the day had not come to look beyond them. 



It is our boast as a people that the demands of the masses of the population for 

 educational facilities have ever been met with promptness by the State, and now that 

 its duty in this respect has been efficiently discharged, we may be said to have entered 





HENRY KENDALL. 



