Prince Alfred is making a kind of Royal progress through - -
Australia. Everywhere he has been received with demonstrations of unbounded loyalty, with addresses, and fetes paid for out of colonial funds. It is expected that the reception in Melbourne will cost 30,0001., and the Prince was enthusiastically welcomed to the city by a crowd of 60,000 persons. Balls, banquets, hunting parties succeeded each other rapidly ; the Prince has seen a corob- boree and shot a kangaroo, and has been assured by a speaker—in Adelaide, not Melbourne—that he may one day be King of the Australias, a much pleasanter berth than King of the Canadians, which has also been proposed for him. The Prince seems to have charmed his entertainers, particularly by the vigour with which he danced a Scotch reel, and the whole continent is in a fever of loyal excitement. Such a reception is by no means a bad way of reminding the world that Australians are still Englishmen by their
own choice, and gives a pleasant fillip to the social monotony of colonial life. Even the personal loyalty to the Queen, so extra- vagantly expressed, is a deeper feeling in the Colonies than Lon- doners usually believe, the Queen being to Colonists what a crucifix is to Catholics, a symbol for which they ultimately contract a direct reverence.
