Education is universal.  The lectures of the professors of the State University—­which is an examining body, with five affiliated colleges in five different towns—­are well attended by students of both sexes.  The examiners are English; the degrees may be taken by either sex indifferently.  Not two per cent. of the Colony’s children go to the secondary schools, though they are good and cheap.  It is her primary education that is the strength and pride of New Zealand.  It is that which makes the list of crimes light.  Criminals and paupers are less often produced than let in from the outside.  The regulations relating to the exclusion of the physically or mentally tainted are far too lax, and will bring their own punishment.  The colonists, honestly anxious that their country shall in days to come show a fine and happy race, are strangely blind to the laws of heredity.  They carelessly admit those whose children to the third and fourth generation must be a degrading influence.  On the other hand, the Colony gains greatly by the regular and deliberate importation of English experts.  Every year a small but important number of these are engaged and brought out.  They vary from bishops and professors to skilled artizans and drill-instructors; but whatever they are, their quality is good, and they usually make New Zealand the home of their families.

With wealth diffused, and caste barriers unknown, a New Zealander, when meeting a stranger, does not feel called upon to act as though in dread of finding in the latter a sponge, toady, or swindler.  Nor has the colonist to consider how the making of chance acquaintances may affect his own social standing.  In his own small world his social standing is a settled thing, and cannot be injured otherwise than by his own folly or misconduct.  Moreover, most of the Islanders are, or have been, brought face to face with the solitude of nature, and many of all classes have travelled.  These things make them more sociable, self-confident, and unsuspicious than the middle classes of older countries.  Such hospitality as they can show is to them a duty, a custom, and a pleasure.

The Islanders are almost as fond of horses and athletics as their Australian cousins.  They are not nearly such good cricketers, but play football better, are often good yachtsmen, and hold their own in rowing, running, jumping, and throwing weights.  Fox-hunting is a forbidden luxury, as the fox may not be imported.  But they have some packs of harriers, and ride to them in a way which would not be despised in the grass counties at Home.  There are fair polo teams too.  They are just as fond of angling and shooting as the race elsewhere.  Capital trout-fishing, some good deer-shooting, and a fine supply of rabbits, hares, and wild ducks help to console the sportsman for the scarcity of dangerous game.  As might be expected in an educated people passionately fond of out-door exercises, well fed and clothed, and with sun and sea air for tonics, drink is not their national vice.  Gambling, especially over horse races, has more claim to that bad eminence.  Perhaps that is one of the reasons why the land rings with denunciations of drink, while comparatively little has until quite lately been said against gambling.