Owing to the climate, hats are much more frequently in use than bonnets, and if the merit of subdued tints is unappreciated, it is not often that the eye is shocked by the glaring discords to which Englishwomen are so prone.  Fringes are much worn, and the hair is often parted on the side.  In spite of the heat, gants de suede find very little favour; they look dirty, and with a 25 per cent. duty cannot be renewed every day.  The usual English fashions find their way to Melbourne in about eight months, and this is the more convenient, because your summer is our winter, and vice versa.  Spring and autumn we agree to forget; this is rather a pity, because practically nine-twelfths of our year are spring and autumn, and on a bright July or August day the dress which is appropriate to a London fog in December looks singularly out of place.  Sealskins and furs are worn till you almost imagine it must be cold, which during daylight it hardly ever is in this country.  In summer, suitable concessions become obligatory, and dresses are made of the thinnest and lightest materials.  Pompadour prints and white calicoes reign supreme, and look better than anything else.  It is then that the poorer classes are able to dress best, the material being cheap.  Winter stuffs are expensive, and to a great degree their effectiveness is in direct ratio to their cost; but during quite half of the Australian year the poor meet the rich, if not on an equality, at any rate on much fairer terms than at home with regard to dress.

Servants, of course, ape their mistresses’ dresses as in England, and generally manage to produce a delightful sense of incongruity in their attire; but for all that, they are much less dowdy than English servants.

So much for ladies’ dress.  Change the sexes, and the picture is by no means so pleasing; for thorough untidiness of person, there can surely be no one to beat the Australian.  Above all must one beware of judging a man’s position by his coat.  It is impossible to tell whether the dirty old man who slouches along the street is a millionaire or a beggar.  The older his coat, and the dirtier his shirt, the more the probabilities are in favour of the millionaire.  Perhaps he thinks he can afford to dress as he pleases.  The city men are more careful of their personal appearance, and have kept up the shadow and image of London.  They wear shiny frock-coats and the worst-brushed and most odd-shaped of top-hats, and imagine they are well-dressed; at least I suppose they do, for they seem to have a sort of contempt for the spruce tweed suits and round hats of ‘new chums,’ and such of the rising generation as have followed their example and adopted that fashion.  Can you imagine yourself wearing a black coat and high hat with the thermometer jogging about from 70º to 110º in the shade?  If the coat were decently cut, and of good cloth and well-brushed, and the silk hat well-shapen and neat, I might put you down a fool, but would admit your claims to be