Page:Australian views of England.djvu/86

  Queensland and New South Wales are talked of. The Bishop of Oxford, the Rev. Charles Kingsley, and others, are aiding in this interesting work.

You people of Sidney may form some notion of the pressure on these poor young women from the fact that more than 3000 applied to be engaged as waitresses in the refreshment department of the International Exhibition, all producing high testimonials.

The English winter and spring have been singularly mild, which was very fortunate for the thousands who in different parts of the country are suffering destitution little short of death. Little hard pinching weather has been felt, but an unusual quantity of rain has fallen, and there have been some mischievous late frosts, which in many places have destroyed all the wall-fruits and done other injury to the gardens. I travelled through a great part of England the latter end of last month: from Reading to Oxford much of the land on both sides of the Great Western line was flooded, and Oxford itself looked like a city in the midst of a sea; again, from Tamworth to Burton, in many places the farm-houses were surrounded by water, rendering access to them