isolation from the Mother-country, which induced them to keep alive the traditionary remembrances upon which they mentally feasted, and which, unconsciously, they permitted to engross their attention. T h e old reverence for those mythical personages k n o w n as titular Saints haunted them, and, firmly fixed in the imagination, they were permitted to nestle there. It is a singular fact that though proverbially a Scotchman is said to be never more at h o m e than' when he is away from " Caledonia, stern and wild," the Scotch were thefirstto indulge in public Saint-worship in Melbourne, where they were soon followed by the Irish, the English bringing up the rear. There used to be a good deal of wholesome enthusiasm generated as the various anniversaries approached, and the enjoyment was by no means confined to what might be termed the official celebration, which was not always well attended. Numerous private parties would be given, and the general body of the populace whose particular amor patriæ was touched, would patronize the taverns throughout the town, and generally m a k e a night of it. At public dinners there was great fun, for the company were in a condition of considerable exaltation, stimulated by a spiritual influence, and the exuberance of a fervour so gushingly poured forth at the shrine of the particular idol glorified. T h e votaries, like other pilgrims of w h o m w e read, would work themselves into a temporaryfitof semi-fanaticism, as if enveloped and fascinated by a nimbus, revealing the shadowy outlines of some special Saint, an Andrew leaning on a Cross, constructed in the form of an X , and waving a bunch of freshly-plucked thistles, or a Patrick shaking a " Sprig of Shillelagh " at a snake d o o m e d to banishment, or a George with the Dragon (he never killed) dead at his feet, twining a rose in the tresses of the Virgin so chivalrously rescued from being eaten ; whilst the orating would, of itself, dumb-founder the very Saints, were they privileged to be listeners. A certain description of Irish elocution was once designated " Sunburstery," which accurately describes the high-faluting rhapsodies which constituted the stock-in-trade of the public speakers at the old national festivals. Let the occasion be Scotch, Irish, or English, it was m u c h the same. Every person and every thing connected with the particular country was pronounced to be so " demi-godish " as to beat anything else, not only " under the sun," but even above that luminary. O u r modern dinners are nothing as compared with the ancients in sensual enjoyment; but there was one creditable exception to be chalked up in favour of the former—no such barbarism was ever attempted as the smoking growing in vogue at the entertainments of to-day.
T h e Irish were the only people w h o ever honoured their Saint with a public procession in Port Phillip, and Patrick's D a y used to be ushered into the world amidst the loud-sounding din of a rather noisy town band. A half-drunken, lively crowd escorted the musicians, "shouting" in a double sense through the streets, and at the hotels, without annoying anyone w h o did not interfere with them, and after " beating the boundaries" in this noisy, though otherwise harmless manner, they separated good-humouredly at sunrise.
It would be difficult to specify the various strata of which the society of to-day is composed, but in the period of which I a m treating it might be divided into three layers, namely, First, Second, and Third. T h e would-be Upper-crust was a pinchbeck snobdom, which took upon itself airs of absurd superiority where the whole population were adventurers w h o left the parent country, if not fortune-hunting, certainly to work out an improved means of livelihood, and to m a k e money if they could. T h e would-be aristocracy, therefore, would not cohere with those w h o m they ranked below them, and this dissociation considerably affected the popularity and success of the early national festivities. With the Scotch there was not only a clannishness but a spurious personal caste which caused the St. Andrew dinners to be surrounded by a kind of select selfishness. T h e disciples of St. George were in the beginning even colder and more freezingly genteel than the others, and it was only when the Middle-crust, Scotch and Irish, went into the thing that they acquired the proper stamina to be considered national demonstrations. T h e Irish Upper-crust class was so far more exclusive than their Scottish or English brethren, that they not only held aloof from the St. Patrick celebrations, but they had not even the public spirit to attempt anything on their o w n account. It is singular, though true, and what one would hardly expect, that the Irish celebrations were the most orderly and creditable of all the old festivals. They were mainly in the hands of what might be called the central stratum, and possibly this m a y account for the good conduct that always characterized them.
