Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/243

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Our New Zealand Cousins.
227

lobbies are replete with every modern device for luxury and adornment. Gildings glisten from floor to ceiling. In the centre is a dome of stained glass, more in keeping with a summer palace on the Bosphorus or Guadalquiver than within the precincts of a lawyer's sanctum. If the magnificence of the offices be at all a fair index to the scale of fees, no wonder Otago litigants are impoverished and complaints of dull times are rife.

A very beautiful cemetery crowns one of the overlooking eminences, on the north of the town; and, from its shady walks and terraces, you can look down on the busy human hive. The long, irregular town spreads away southward at your feet. There is the dark-blue mass of the University, laved by the waters of the Leith Burn, and admirably set off by the quaint red-brick buildings, of Queen Anne style of architecture, which form the residences of the staff of professors. Farther along, the imposing bulk of the hospital looms up from the valley, and then beyond, the graceful spire of the Knox Church, the aspiring altitude of the Town Hall, and crowning the heights, terrace on terrace of really-beautiful houses with artistically laid-out grounds, and the Boys' and Girls' High Schools, the convent, the cathedral, and other great buildings breaking the continuity and evidencing the importance of the city. In fact nothing better perhaps is better calculated to give the visitor an idea of the push, energy, "go" of Dunedin, than to see how the citizens have made the most of their difficulties of site. Great hills