YOUNG AUSTRALIA.

Hitherto I have been writing of the properties and adjuncts of Australian life.  It is high time to say something of the colonists themselves.  And, here I shall describe the types which the colony has produced and is producing, rather than such modifications as colonists born and bred in England have undergone during their subsequent residence in Australia—­colonials as distinct from colonists.

Perhaps of their first stage of existence the less said the better.  I have a holy horror of babies, to whatever nationality they may belong; but for general objectionableness I believe there are none to compare with the Australian baby.  It is not only that the summer heat and sudden changes of climate make him worse-behaved than his confreres over the ocean, but the little brute is omnipresent, and I might almost add omnipotent.  Nurses are more expensive and mothers less fastidious than in England.  Consequently, baby lives in the family circle almost from the time of its birth.  Nurseries are few and far between.  He is lashed into a chair by his mother’s side at meals; he accompanies her when she is attending to her household duties, and often even when she is receiving her visitors.  But if this were all I would say nothing.  French children are brought up in a similar way; and in their case it certainly has its advantages as far as the child is concerned, whatever may be the inconvenience to the adults amongst whom it is brought.  It is easy to avoid families whose children make themselves nuisances to visitors.  But the middle and lower classes of Australians are not content with the baby’s supremacy in the household.  Wherever his mother goes, baby is also taken.  He fills railway carriages and omnibuses, obstructs the pavement in perambulators, and is suckled coram populo in the Exhibition.  There is no getting away from him, unless you shut yourself up altogether.  He squalls at concerts; you have to hold him while his mother gets out of the omnibus, and to kiss him if you are visiting her house.

It is little better when he gets old enough to walk and talk.  Having once made the household bow down before him, he is slow to relinquish the reins of office.  Possession is nine points of the law.  It requires a stern parent to make good the tenth.  If the child no longer cries or has to be kissed, he makes up for it in other ways.  He has breathed the free air of Australian independence too early to have much regard for the fifth commandment.  To make himself a nuisance till he gets what he wants is the art he first learns and to this end he considers all means legitimate.  Strict and a fortiori severe measures towards children are at a discount in Australia, and, considering the surrounding circumstances, by no other means can they be rendered tractable.  The child has no restrictions put on his superabundant animal spirits, and he runs wild in the most extraordinary, and often to elders, unpleasant freaks.  Certes the second stage is but little less unpleasant than the first,