sphere, which makes distant objects look curiously near: but this cannot sufficiently be represented in any picture. The general character of the best parts of the country, especially that of the Canterbury district, is that of vast plains covered with a sort of brown pasture; which, to emigrants of a complaining turn of mind, and fond of the picturesque, has often at first sight seemed exceedingly repulsive.

Still something might have been done as usual with the long pole; but my wish is rather to present the subject in a different aspect, and to dwell on New Zealand as simply a great open field for English colonization; where, as near as may be, a miniature, hereafter to become a great picture, of English life and society may be reproduced. Such has been the vision of the best of those who have gone out there, and who, in anticipation of the future fortunes of their adopted land, have delighted in calling it the Britain of the Southern Seas.

This title may suggest to us the question, why then of all names in the world, should our Colony be called New Zealand? New Zealand implies an Old Zealand, as we know there is, in Holland; but what have we to do with that country? and why are we to suggest to the half-informed emigrant, that he may be going to a land of dykes and baggy trousers, inhabited by men born with skates on their feet, and talking Low Dutch?

The truth is, the name is a misfortune, and we should be glad even now if we could alter it. But to alter an established name of any person or thing is a difficult matter, and has very seldom been accomplished. It has been pretty well achieved in the case of a neighbour

colony of New Zealand, which was at first called, in the same Dutch fashion, Van Diemen's Land. This Colony, after going through much reproach on account of the convicts who at one time were the chief part of its population, being called Van Demon's Land, Vandemonium, and other things, has now get a better name as well as character, and is called Tasmania.

But this is still a very imperfect improvement; for Tasman, as well as Van Diemen, was a Dutchman. The latter was Governor-General of the Dutch possessions in the East, and Tasman, while exploring under his authority, discovered New Zealand, as well as Tasmania; whence our Colony, as well as the other, has its Dutch

name.

It was once proposed to change the name to New Albion, which would do very well; but I fear there is small chance of its being done now.

Again, the proud title which I above mentioned, "the Britain of the South," may remind us of two passages in the writings of two great English historiansone of them, indeed, referring also to a third great English historian-on the subject of New Zealand. The first is Gibbon, the second Lord Macaulay. I am obliged to refer to the first of them from memory, and I cannot recall the exact words; but it is something to this effect-Gibbon wished to pay a compliment to Hume, the historian of England, for whom, as a brotherinfidel, he seems to have had as much regard as his cold and sneering nature admitted. And something leading him to refer to Australasia, he says, with an allusion to the cannibal habits of the New Zealanders, which were nearly all for which in his days (eighty or

ninety years ago) they were known, that there was no telling, but that in time the advance of civilization might be such, that even in those regions one might arise worthy to be called "the Hume of New Zealand."

The other passage is much better known, being in truth a very beautiful and poetical passage, and it has often been quoted of late in speeches and newspapers. Lord Macaulay is dwelling on the changes and the extinction of nations, and says that in future it may be such, that at some distant day a travelling New Zealander may stand on the broken arches of London Bridge, contemplating the ruins of St. Paul's.*

You will observe that while both these passages make a contrast between England and New Zealand, there is a difference of tone between them, as is natural from the great progress in civilization which New Zealand has made between the days of Gibbon and our own. In particular, neither Lord Macaulay nor any living writer would allude to cannibalism in that country now, which atrocious practice was formerly, it might be said, one of their established institutions. We know what we mean by a title to land, such as, in this country, title by purchase, by inheritance, by gift, and so on. A New Zealander of old is said to have relied on a title of a different kind. He was asked what right he had to the land he occupied. My right, he said, is surely undeniable: I have eaten the former owner.

But it may now seem time to ask what it is we are talking about what New Zealand is. New Zealand is at the Antipodes. What do we mean by Antipodes? It is made of two Greek words, signifying "against" and * Essays, III. 101.

"feet," and it means literally that which is against, or over against, our feet. So that if a gimlet could be made to travel right along the diameter of the globe from where I am standing, it might bore a hole in the heel of one of the worthy persons whom I have been partly the means of establishing in the Canterbury Settlement in New Zealand. Or, as was said by that facetious paper called Punch, of the large statue of the Duke of Wellington at Hyde Park Corner, that it was so heavy that if it were to fall off its arch, it would go crashing and clattering through the whole thickness of the earth, and come out at the Antipodes. It is true that, as we are told, the central heat of the globe is up to the point at which metals are melted; so that the Duke would be melted and diffused long before he got there. But if anything ever did get through the world vertically from any part of England, it would get out of its troubles. somewhere about New Zealand.

It is, as I suppose, in great measure from this corresponding position of New Zealand, that it resembles England so much as it does in climate. The temperature is of a higher average, and the winds are often more violent; so that of one part of the Colony, called Wellington, it is said that you may know a Wellington man by his habit of holding his hat on with his hand. A few earthquakes, rarely serious ones, have been known in some parts; none hitherto, be it observed, in Canterbury. But on the whole the climates are not very unlike, and it is probable that anything, animate or inanimate, that thrives in England would do as well in New Zealand.

The Colony is also not very different in size from

Great Britain. It consists of two large islands, north and south, separated by a narrow strait, down which strait, called Cook's Straits, it is chiefly that the high winds come rushing down, of which I have spoken. It has also mostly a wavy or indented line of coast, suitable for many harbours and seaport towns; and in most parts there is water enough, and the land sufficiently suited either for pasture or agriculture, and free from the periodical droughts from which parts of Australia have sometimes suffered, to make it quite possible that at some distant day the islands may be nearly as thickly peopled as England itself.

This, however, is by no means the case now. I have got a little book called The Six Colonies of New Zealand, written and given to me by a gentleman* who was Prime Minister of one of the said six Colonies, of which the whole population may be about equal to that of the town of Stourbridge. These are the six main settlements, each with its separate local Government, all subordinate to one general central Government, at present existing in the Colony. They are all on the coast, and at some distance from each other; and their separate and, at first, unconnected foundation, is according to what must always happen in the settlement of a new country. It is as if in these days England was a newlydiscovered island, with but few natives; and various enterprising parties, finding abundance of coal and water by the mouth of the Mersey, rich pastures on the South Downs, great arable plains by the Wash, a fine harbour in Wales, and the mouths of great rivers where Bristol and London are, were to plant colonies in Lan*Mr. W. Fox.