POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. , 449 



rapid growth in wealth and increase of population have, of course, fed this enterprise 

 lavishly, and generously aided toward the realization of the standard at which the 

 founders of such papers as the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Argus aimed. 

 But the colonies have been so far fortunate in the fact that the interests of journalistic 

 enterprise have fallen into the hands of men with large views not only for the imme- 

 diate present but for the future men who have ever made it their first endeavour to ensure 

 a healthy tendency and an honourable tone in the newspapers they conducted, at first with 

 such varying fortunes, but eventually with such signal success. The chief cities of all 

 the Australian colonies can, therefore, ' boast of the possession of influential organs of 

 public opinion, of the character of which the two oldest papers just named may be taken 

 as fitting representative types. Beside the more important metropolitan journals there are 

 in all the colonies a large number of provincial and suburban papers which cater for 

 the wants of the reading public in the country as well as in the neighbourhood of large 

 cities. Every country town has at least one, often two, and sometimes three newspapers 

 of this kind, many of them efficiently conducted and well printed, and all earnest advo- 

 cates of the local interests of the town or district they represent. Some of these 

 provincial organs, like the Maitland Mercury in New South Wales, for instance, and the 

 newspapers of Ballarat and Sandhurst, are old-established and valuable properties, com- 

 manding a wide influence and an extensive circulation. The provincial journal usually iden- 

 tifies itself with the characteristic pursuit or interest of the- people in whose district it is 

 established, and its first object is, of -course, to provide the desired information on this 

 particular subject. But to this is added a keen interest in the politics of the country 

 and an eager discussion of the test questions of the day, among which some phase of 

 the land law almost always finds a place. In the smaller townships the local paper is 

 usually conducted by a practical compositor, on somewhat of the same lines that are 

 followed in parts of the United States, and from very humble beginnings these some- 

 times develope with their surroundings into papers of considerable importance to the 

 district in which they are published. In this way the settled parts of the colonies are 

 well covered by the newspaper Press in one or other of its forms, and even the most 

 sparsely inhabited portions of the country are not left without some medium of public 

 opinion. One result of this state of things is to be traced in the lively interest taken 

 in public affairs throughout the colonies, and the close acquaintance of the people at 

 large with contemporary politics and the current events of the time. 



The causes that have operated to retard the formation of a distinct school of 

 Australian literature have been equally active in repressing the development of Australian 

 art. The art of a country is the outcome of its culture and of its leisure, and we 

 have seen that for the first three-quarters of a century the Australian colonies had but 

 little of the one and nothing of the other. Artists occasionally found their way to the 

 antipodes, and some of them, like Sir Oswald Brierley and a few others, have since 

 won a fame in England that the Colonies could never have given them. But these were 



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merely fugitive visitors, and their presence in Australia in those days was never 

 remarked. Yet for many years a good deal of quiet artistic effort went on in an unob- 

 trusive way, and now and then men of means and culture who had found their way to 

 Australia brought good pictures to the colonies, and by their taste and appreciation 



