EPILOGUE.
The promise made in the Preface to these Chronicles has been redeemed to the best of my ability. I have done my best; more no one could do. But whether I have done it well or otherwise, it is for others, not for me, to form an opinion. To write the history of Melbourne when it was a straggling, shabby, infant township,—now the metropolis of the Southern Hemisphere—was an enjoyable treat, for chance fixed my residence continuously within its precincts, and so enabled me to aid in many of the movements undertaken for its social and political advancement; and to watch the flow and ebb of the intermittent tides of prosperity or adversity by which it was flooded. There is hardly an old landmark I did not see removed, few events of importance in the olden time I did not witness, and which with the Melbourne of yore were so identified, that when I now ramble through its almost unrecognizable streets, I seem as if wandering amongst an unknown generation, a strange people, every crowd a sea of unfamiliar faces! I am like a haunted man, for visions of realities long shrouded in oblivion confront me at every step—
"Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro"—
And gaze wistfully at me as I pass. Every score yards I traverse memory recalls some important, amusing, or may be, melancholy reminiscence connected with the locus of some public celebration, remarkable meeting, election row, or party riot, where a newspaper editor was knocked down, a conflagration flared up, or other notable incident happened.
To one merit, at least, I may fairly lay claim i.e., the execution of a work which no one else could have undertaken with any well-grounded hope of success in the acquisition and arrangement of facts. Though many could easily be found of infinitely superior ability, no other individual possessed the long local experience without which the project would have been simply impracticable. Should any person imagine that a gallop through the old Melbourne newspapers, or cramming from the books written on Port Phillip, would suffice, he is egregiously mistaken; for I unhesitatingly declare in defiance of all contradiction, that a large number of the most interesting and raciest of the items recorded never appeared previously in print; but were gleaned from old letters and diaries; and the personal and epistolary enquiries addressed to the few surviving old colonists whom I considered competent to throw any light upon some mystified question, a dimly observed, almost obliterated speck in the nebulæ through which I was obliged to grope.
Originally, I had intended to publish The Chronicles in book form; but reflection led me to deem it more advisable to issue it in sections through the Press to the public, inviting the freest criticism, and the correction of possible, though inadvertent, inaccuracies; and promising, in the not improbable event of its re-issue in a collected shape, to benefit by the same, so far as I could after careful investigation. My purpose in adopting this course was to render my effort worthy of the cause in which it was accomplished, and to make it a reliable record of bygone times.
I must also observe that as I never credited myself with any special attributes as a writer, and though having had much to do with the early journalism of the city, I was never so egotistic as to put forth any pretensions to be considered a litterateur in even the most restricted sense, and I claim nothing on the score of literary merit for what I have done. The Chronicles of Early Melbourne comprise little more than the collection of events and dates detailed in an order wherein each chapter constitutes a branch in itself, starting from a beginning, and running either to its termination,
