George Street near the City Hall, in which are many fine shops, refreshment saloons, and cafés, with flower and fruit stores. These areas being under glass – that is, roofed over at the top of the buildings – are a favorite resort for ladies and promenaders generally. On entering these arcades one steps from deafening and confusing noise into a quiet atmosphere, with most agreeable surroundings. Not far away on George Street is the general vegetable and fruit market, where poultry and flowers are also sold. The articles are displayed with an artistic eye for color and appropriate effect. Young women are employed to sell the fruit and flowers, whose pleasant and by no means obtrusive importunity with visitors makes many purchasers. George Street is fragrant on a sunny afternoon with button-hole bouquets, purchased of these flower-girls, who evince admirable taste in the graceful and effective manner of arranging their floral gems. The display of fruit is remarkable, and the article is as cheap as it is tempting; so that those who in England or in many parts of America would not feel able to afford to indulge in oranges, apples, pears, and bananas, not forgetting the appetizing fruit of the passion-plant, here make of these a wholesome addition to their daily food-supply. Sydney is only rivalled in this respect by San Francisco, which city cannot be surpassed in the cheapness or quality of its fruit from tropical and semi-tropical regions within its own borders.
Many floral establishments solely devoted to the sale of plants and cut-flowers were observed in different sections of the city with very beautiful displays in their large plate-glass windows. It is only a liberal population of refined taste which will support these attractive establishments; their manifest thrift tells its own story.
If in these notes we speak most frequently of the common classes, depicting scenes illustrative of humble and every-day life among the masses, it is because such are the most representative; but the reader may be sure that there is another class happily existing in Sydney, and in all of these Pacific colonies, where the author met with and shared the hospitality of many cultured people, who exhibited a degree of refinement unsurpassed in the best of our own home circles. Some writers choose to dilate upon their intercourse with such people, giving the names of officials and the initials of private individuals from whom they received entertainment; but it seems to us better to avoid such personal mention, in which the reader can feel very little interest.
The University of Sydney, admirably situated about a mile from the business portion of the city, not far from the Alfred Hospital, is the first that was founded in the Southern Hemisphere. In its immediate neighborhood are the affiliated colleges of St. Paul, St. Andrew, and St. John, belonging respectively to the Church of England, the Presbyterian denomination, and the Roman Catholics. Religious instruction is given at these colleges, but not in the University. This edifice is of Gothic architecture, built of freestone, and is situated in spacious elevated grounds overlooking Victoria Park and the city, being enclosed by a high iron fence. Within this enclosure, which is several acres in extent, the land is terraced and ornamented with choice trees and flowers. The façade of the main building is over four hundred feet in length. On one side is a fine large stone building just finished, which is designed for a Medical School; and on the other is a spacious structure appropriated to the purpose of a museum, where we found some thousands of classified objects of special interest as antiquities. The object of the University is to afford a liberal education to all orders and denominations without distinction. Graduates rank in the same order as those of similar British home institutions. This University was originally founded by Government, but from time to time it has been the recipient of rich endowments from private sources, until it has become nearly self-supporting. The great hall of this building deserves particular mention. It is a remarkable apartment finished elaborately in the Elizabethan style, and is lighted by ten large stained-glass windows. In these were observed representations of the sovereigns of England, from William the Conqueror to Queen Victoria. Several of these windows are the gifts of wealthy patrons. The room is about a hundred and fifty feet in length and fifty wide, with a ceiling reaching to the roof, being at least seventy feet in height, finished in Gothic style and forming a marvel of carpentry, carving and painting. The citizens of Sydney may well be proud of this admirably appointed University.
The Art Gallery is a low one-story iron building in the grounds of the park known as the Domain, and it well repaid a visit of a few hours, though it is at present only the nucleus of a future collection. It contains some excellent modern pictures by popular artists, English and French. One fine example by Louis Buvelot, an Australian artist, is full of merit. There are many excellent models of classic sculpture, including the group of the Laocoön. Some choice water-colors interested us, and there were some meritorious pieces of sculpture by native artists. One or two unselfish and devoted friends of art in Sydney have given the most of their time and much of their pecuniary means for years to promoting the interests of this collection, which under their fostering care has already reached a high intrinsic value, and is full of promise of future permanence and still greater excellence.
On the way back to our hotel from visiting the Art Gallery we stopped at the Free Public Library, which contains over one hundred thousand volumes arranged after a most admirable system. Not only do the immediate residents of the city and its environs enjoy the advantages of this collection, but the books are sent all over New South Wales, upon application from local authorities, in boxes containing one hundred volumes each, free of transportation. To secure this privilege in any instance, it is only necessary for the town authorities to sign a bond, making themselves responsible for the return of the books within a given period, or agreeing to pay for any that are lost. This system of distribution, we were told, worked admirably, involving no loss and no more wear and tear than any other consistent use of the books, while the benefits of the library are thus extended to half a million of people.
Another circulating library, known as Maddock's Select Library, was found in George Street, after the style of Mudie's in London, or Loring's in Boston, the object of which was to supply its patrons with the best books and serial publications as soon as published. Besides the periodical literature of the day, this establishment contains thousands of standard books, which are constantly lent for a moderate sum to the reading public. This library, we were told, has been established for twenty years, and has really become a city institution. It is only upon visiting places which do not possess such convenient literary resorts that one can properly estimate their public value and importance.
Walking about the wharves in the early morning we one day saw and awaited the mooring of the incoming boat from Parametta. It was crowded with merchants' clerks, shop-keepers, and business people generally who are employed in the city during the day, but who return to their suburban homes to sleep. Among these were women from the shores of the river and harbor, with baskets of cut-flowers for the Sydney market. They were all neatly dressed, bright-looking girls and women, as rosy as their lovely wares. Some of them had two long light frames of wire which they carried in each hand, and in the openings of which were double rows of flowers, enabling each girl to carry a score and more of bouquets. These were glowing with morning freshness imparted by "some sweet mystery of the dew," and were composed of camellias in three or four colors, lilies of the valley, blue violets, and tea-roses, with sheltering borders of maiden's-hair fern and other varieties of green. All these were of out-door growth. Truly, flowers are appreciated, cultivated, and loved all over the world; even here in Eldorado they delight the eye with their beauty and the senses with their fragrance.
A brief day devoted to a trip from Sydney to the town of Parametta will well repay the visitor; and to vary the scene one should go thither by steamboat and return by the Sydney and Bathurst Railroad. This excursion gives one a better idea of the harbor in detail than can be acquired in any other manner. The comfortable little passenger-boat skirts the shore and winds among the small islands, stopping at many of them to land or to take up passengers. These islands are clotted with villas and cottages, each having a two-story veranda, generally decked with vines, and all overlooking the bay. The boat passes under a picturesque iron bridge painted white, which crosses an arm of the sea. Skilled oarsmen are constantly pulling up and down the Parametta River in their long, pointed, egg-shell boats, for here is the famous boat-race course. Verdant and well-wooded lawns of exquisite green sweep grandly down to the water's edge. Orange and lemon trees, with here and there a group of bananas and other tropical plants, bend gracefully over the tide. Now and again the Australian ivy beautifies the shore, creeping over the quaint little cottages and bursting out at times in clouds of yellow blossoms