Slight as is the division between the middle-class and the wealthy class, I ought perhaps to say a few words on the latter.  Practically, as well as theoretically, there is no aristocracy in Australia, and the number of leisured men is yet too small for them to form a class by themselves.  Still every day their number is increasing; and although they almost all do a certain amount of work, it is rather because, if they did not, they would find time lie heavy on their hands, than because there is any particular need for it.  The wealthy squatter—­which low-sounding word has in Australia become synonymous with aristocrat—­spends the greater part of the year in supervising his station, although generally employing a manager, whose work bears much the same relation to his own, as that of the permanent head of a department does to that of his political chief.  Whenever there is a race meeting or any other attraction, the squatter comes down ( not up as in England) to town and spends a few days or a few weeks there, as the case may be.  If he is a married man he probably keeps a town house, where his wife lives the greater part of the winter, which is the ‘season;’ if a bachelor, he lives at his club, which supplies him with lodging as well as board.

But he finds it hard work to spend any lengthened period in town.  The clubs are deserted for the greater part of the day; everyone else has his or her work to do, and a lounger becomes equally a nuisance to himself and to his friends.  With no tastes for literature or art, and little opportunity for their gratification if he should chance to possess them, he is thrown utterly on his own resources, and these rarely extend beyond drinking and gambling.  Both these pursuits are more fitted for gaslight than daylight, and if indulged in too freely during the day, pall in the evening, so that he has literally nothing to do from breakfast till dinner.  He cannot race or play cricket quotidianally, so that he soon returns to his station, where he stops till the next race meeting.

The wealth of Australia has not yet passed beyond the first generation.  The majority of the wealthy have themselves made their fortunes, and are not inclined to let them be squandered by their sons, at least during, their lifetime.  The number of young men with no regular employment is at present very small.  And it is well it should be so.  Else we should feel all the evils of a plutocracy, purified neither by education nor public opinion—­evils which have already made themselves apparent in the political system of Victoria.

The Australian aristocrat has the greatest contempt for politics, and thereby has forged a collar for his own neck.  The ‘Berry blight,’ as it is called, which has fallen over Victoria, is, to a great extent, a reaction against the selfish and inconsiderate policy of the squatters when they were in power.  In such a crisis the mob has no time to be just, remembering only that the aristocracy were never generous.  Politically, I fancy that the squatters will never again obtain power, except under conditions which will make a return to the old regime impossible.  Socially, there are yet evil days before Australia.