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“weary longings and yearnings

for the mystical better things:”

Whence comes it that he is a popular poet here? Let him answer us English for himself and Melbourne:

“You are slow, very slow, in discerning

that book-lore and wisdom are twain:”

Yes, indeed, to Melbourne, such as life presents itself to her, she knows it, and, what is more, she knows that she knows it, and her self-knowledge gives her a contempt for the pedantry of the old world. Walk about in her streets, look at her private buildings, these banks of hers, for instance, and you will see this. They mean something, they express something: they do not (as Mr. Arnold said of our British Belgravian architecture) “only express the impotence of the artist to express anything.” They express a certain sense of movement, of progress, of conscious power. They say: “Some thirty years ago the first gold nuggets made their entry into William Street. Well, many more nuggets have followed, and wealth of other sorts has followed the nuggets, and we express that wealth—we express movement, progress, conscious power.—Is that, now, what your English banks express?” And we can only say that it is not, that our English banks express something quite different; something, if deeper, slower; if stronger, more clumsy.