Page:Victoria, with a description of its principal cities, Melbourne and Geelong.djvu/179

 and botanical gardens; public libraries and museums; on all of which no expense has been spared to render them perfect, beautiful, and pleasing. Though it is vastly more distant than the transatlantic continent, its relations with the mother country are not less intimate.

Thus, gold, that created the western world, is now fast creating another and mightier empire in the south. There are some who cavil at this theory, and point to Spain as a proof that gold could not raise a nation to greatness; and still, when we look over the history of Spain, we cannot fail to remark that its internal wealth was not the cause of its decay, for at one time that very wealth had made it the most magnificent on the earth. To its policy, therefore, alone is attributable its downfall for, while England, with its more enlightened, free, and independent government—unhampered by the despotic sway of a bigoted priesthood—and its iron and coal mines, only aided by industry, is now the richest and happiest country in the world,—we may hope that Australia, untrammelled by the fetters of a vacillating and grasping government, but following the example of the mother country, will advance, as it has even already done, into power and greatness.

That gold, when rightly used, may prove a blessing, not a curse, the history of the Australian colonies and of England itself is convincing; to that history we appeal in illustration of the moral influence, as well as the economical, which this treasure