has gone completely ahead of her rival: though it is singular that, while the latter city has become the home of budding art and literature in Australia, Melbourne has retained her prominence in music. Thus both Melba and Ada Crossley are Victorian born. And when Miss Amy Castles, the young Victorian soprano, whose singing has created a furore in Australia, sailed for England, in September last, to complete her musical education before appearing regularly in public, her admirers enthusiastically responded to the appeal to provide her with funds for this purpose, and the concerts she gave realized between £3000 and £4000. But Sydney is unquestionably the centre of Australian intellectual life, and during the last few years has enriched the prose and poetry of Australia by a succession of notable volumes, though there is yet, perhaps, a tendency to dwell upon station life and customs as giving the only typical Australian colour, overlooking much that is characteristic, and will yield matter for treatment in the literature of the future. Sydney artists establish camps by the water side, and study all the fleeting impressions of the sunlit harbour; so that it is not surprising to find them, almost to a man, disciples of the French and Impressionist schools in art. Not even a single volume of verse published in Sydney, however, dwells upon the beauties of the harbour beside which the poets live. As an illustration of the difference in the intellectual calibre of the two cities, it is worth noting that while Ethel Turner and Louise Mack—two charming young Sydney writers, who have made child life a special study—are known to every one in their own city, and much honoured, scarcely any one in Melbourne is aware that Ada Cambridge, a lady with an established reputation in fiction, has been for years resident there. And it is most remarkable to
