SOCIAL RELATIONS.

My last letter was necessarily, from the nature of its subject, a little flaky—­a charge to which all these notes must more or less plead guilty.  Though the heading of this one differs slightly, it must practically be a continuation of the same subject.

The first social relation, like charity, begins in the family circle, and was incidentally touched upon in my last.  Between husband and wife the relations in Australia are, on the whole, probably as satisfactory as in any other part of the world.  Both generally marry from love, and whatever may be the general effect of love-matches, it cannot be denied that more than any others they tend to promote pleasant relations between the ’two contracting parties,’ as the French would call them.  Amongst the wealthy, as everywhere else, there cannot of course be the close marital intimacy of the middle classes; but not only is infidelity less common than in London, but moreover, the proportion of the wealthy who keep up the style which produces the quasi-separation of domestic life is far smaller.  Husband and wife have grown rich together; they have taken counsel together, and lived an open life, as far as each other are concerned, ever since they were married.  Against this the usages of society, dressing-rooms and lady’s-maids are of little avail.  You may chase the second nature out by the door, but it jumps in again at the window.

In the middle and lower class the comparatively cribbed, cabined, and confined existence is also of the greatest service to that community of thought and action upon which conjugal happiness to so large an extent depends.  Domestic occupations also occupy the thoughts of the wives, and business those of the husbands, so continually, as to leave few moments of mental vacuity for Satan to introduce mischief into.  Of an evening the clubs are almost deserted, and their few occupants are nearly all bachelors, or married men who have left their wives in the country, having come down to town themselves on business.  Drink must be recognised as a factor on the opposite side, and a by no means unimportant one; but there are many women who have no objection to their husbands drinking, so long as they either drink at home or come straight thither from the public-house.

I wish I could give as favourable a view of the parental relations.  They are undeniably the weak point of family life in the colonies.  During childhood a certain obedience is of course enforced; but public feeling is strong in favour of the naughty boy and wilful girl, looking as it does upon these qualities as prophetic of future enterprise.  So many of our best colonists, it must be remembered, were eminently wild in their younger days, that it is no wonder they think ‘there is something’ in the self-willed child.  Their own life has been too much of a struggle for them to be able to appreciate at their true value the gentler qualities which in themselves would have