104 TlMEHRI. 
building material we possess or can easily procure. 
From the new Law Courts and its varied outline and 
vast display of deep-russet coloured roof, to many eyes 
depressing, and to most minds displeasing, we turn to 
another building, a perfe6l contrast in its way, and at the 
same time a standing disgrace to our worthy town, "The 
Assembly Rooms." This is the largest public hall in the 
city, and while letting alone its ample width and local 
usefulness, and we may add, most enviable position, it 
has not a single redeeming art-point in its favour ; not 
even hard material to fall back upon. 
Close to it stands a rather low, but well built concrete 
and iron decorated edifice, about the first of its sort 
erected in the colony ; and a move, we take it, in the 
right direction. It is known as the " Hand-in-Hand" 
buildings, and contains some Municipal Offices within. 
While it possesses a fair amount of original art-character, 
it loses much of its beauty from want of a proper 
balance between the concrete or constructional part, 
and the very elaborate, though well-designed, open iron 
decorative work. The building — may we say it ? — con- 
veys more the idea of a Turkish Bath entrance, waiting for 
its long frieze to be filled in with its name, or title, or 
a Railway Station turned out-side in, than of a sober 
Government building where grave City Fathers meet 
to hold therein their useful consultations, or again, 
the place where people call with serious faces to pay 
down to the last farthing their taxes due ! 
The word Railway Station, makes us now turn our eyes 
with sorrow to the east end of Carmichael Street, where 
stands close to Government House — shame to have to own 
it — the only railway station in the town, a building 
