In every aspect of life, then, from its highest to its lowest, let us remember this idea of Culture, let us make for the best article, and be secure in its possession. The other day a Melbourne lady was saying to me how pretty and charming a place the Fitzroy Gardens were as a public park. “But the brown plaster statues,” I said, “and the concrete water-shrines.” And this Melbourne lady frankly declared her allegiance to these things, and, when in my disagreeable unsatisfied way I began to compare them with the marble copies from the Antique which are to be seen in the Inner Domain and Botanical Gardens in Sydney, she frankly told me that _after all_ it was only _a matter of opinion_, and _my_ opinion was this and _hers_ was that! “And so,” I said, “my dear lady, it is, _after all_, only _a matter of opinion_ whether the Apollo of the Belvidere or the Venus of Milo is more beautiful or less beautiful than the statue of Burke and Wills in Collins Street, not to say the brown-plaster statues in the Fitzroy Gardens?” And then this Melbourne lady, who had read many novels and magazines, and several volumes of sermons and even popular “philosophy books,” maintained her original assertion with the charming assurance of her sex; and I could only think that it was a pity she had not Culture—did not know the best, or even the second or third best, of what has been known and thought in the world in the matter of sculptural beauty, for then she would not have helped to persuade her husband to vote for the erection of any more brown-plaster statues and concrete water-shrines in the public places of his city. But, as it is, I am so thankful that the Sydney people have decorated one of their public places with really fine marble copies from the Antique (which none of these Australians, with their superior love for beautiful things has yet, so far as I am aware, thought of defacing), that I wonder at myself for thinking of saying it is a pity to see beside these so many poor modern and perhaps colonial products; for who can be wise—do I say in an hour, in a day, in a year, in a life-time? nay, rather, in a generation? Certainly not the architects and public decorators of Australia. Let us be thankful for what we have got, and diligently go on showing our thankfulness by asking for more.