Page:The empire and the century.djvu/510

 the manual or clerical labourer, may be a small enough edifice, but, like Goldsmith's Swiss, the householder

Moreover, except in Wellington, the cottage is more likely than not to be surrounded by a garden. Indeed, it chiefly is the gardens which are the saving clause of the towns and suburbs; the less said about the architecture the better. But the gardens, helped by the bright skies, fresh air, and general look of spaciousness and cleanliness, redeem most of the streets and squares. New Zealanders bid fair to be great gardeners, as, indeed, they should be in such a climate. There is still room even in most of the settled districts for man to turn round in. Though monopoly has already done him much mischief, he is not divorced from the soil. The number of distinct land-holdings is 116,000. Of these 66,000 are of more than 1 acre apiece, so may be set down as something larger than sites for buildings, yards, and cottage gardens. The remainder are nearly all urban, and their number shows that the process of packing humanity into courts, alleys, and slums has scarcely yet begun. It would, indeed, be monstrous if it had, seeing that the islands are as large as the kingdom of Italy.

Nor do you find in New Zealand the peculiarity which strikes the visitor to Australia—namely, disproportionately large cities. It is the most decentralized of colonies: there is no overshadowing centre; instead you find four towns—Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, and Wellington. The largest of these, Auckland, has, with its suburbs, about 70,000 people, and the smallest of the four, Wellington, about 53,000. Wellington, too, though the seat of Government, exercises no special political influence. The cities, indeed, do not dictate to the Colony, though intellectually they may influence it For instance, no representative of any of the four centres sits in the Cabinet. 30—2