gradually obliterated. This hope has been largely frustrated by the opposition of the Roman Catholics to the State schools. They assert it as a principle of faith that religion and education must go together; and, except in the remote country districts, they have maintained, at great cost to themselves, separate schools. They complain bitterly of the injustice of a system by which they are compelled to pay their share as taxpayers to the support of schools they cannot take advantage of. There are constant demands on their part for a separate grant for their own schools; demands which have been, so far, in South Australia at all events, without effect, Thus one result of a system which, it was hoped, would bring Roman Catholics and Protestants nearer together has been to embitter the feeling between them. Though religious teaching is forbidden, the school books abound in lessons of a high moral character; truth, honesty, kindness, industry', manliness being enjoined on almost every page, while selections from the best poems of our language are frequent. Yet, in the net result, it may perhaps be admitted that the national character, as the native-born generations, educated on this system, grow up, is showing signs of a leaning towards the purely materialistic. The Roman Catholics reap the reward of their devotion, not in politics nor billet-hunting alone. Protestantism, indeed, seems rather moribund as a religious force in Australia; has in many ways almost become a mere convention of respectability. And the Australian face, which is generally fairly typified amongst the semi-professional cricketers who visit England, is perhaps more intelligent than cultivated; as, indeed, is natural in a community where everything tends to be levelled to a conformity to the ideals of what, in England would be the lower middle-class.
