lived to see pulled down within the period of our own lives. There was no foresight and a great lack of economy in this old way of city building.

But now the founder has all these examples before his eyes, and is grandly courageous in his determination to avoid the evils of which he has heard and perhaps seen so much. Of course he is sanguine. A founder of cities is necessarily a sanguine man, or he would not find himself employed on such a work. He pegs out his streets and his squares bravely, being stopped by no consideration as to the value of land. He clings to parallelograms as being simple, and in a day or two has his chief thoroughfare a mile long, his cross streets all numbered and named, his pleasant airy squares, each with a peg at each corner, out in the wilderness. Here shall be his Belgravia for the grandees, and this his Cheapside and his Lombard Street for the merchants and bankers. We can understand how pleasant may be the occupation and how pile upon pile would rise before the eyes of the projector, how spires and minarets would ascend, how fountains would play in the open places, and pleasant trees would lend their shade to the broad sunny ways.

Then comes the real commencement with some little hovel at the corner of two as yet invisible streets. Other hovels arise always at a distance from each other and the town begins to be a town. Sometimes there will be success, but much more often a failure. Very many

failures I have seen, in which all the efforts of the sanguine founder have not produced more than an Inn, a church, half a dozen stores, and twice as many drinking booths. And yet there have been the broad streets,-and the squares if one would take the trouble to make enquiry. Pretoria has not been a failure. Among recent attempts of the kind Pretoria is now likely to be a dis

tinguished success. An English Governor is to live there, and there will be English troops, I fear, for many years. Balls will be given at Pretoria. Judges will hold their courts there, and a Bishop will live in a Pretorian Bishopstowe. But the Pretoria of to-day has its unknown squares, and its broad ill defined streets about which houses straggle in an apparently formless way, none of which have as yet achieved the honours of a second storey. The brooks flow pleasantly, but sometimes demand an inconvenient amount of jumping. The streets lie in holes, in which when it rains the mud is very deep. In all such towns as these mud assumes the force of a fifth element, and becomes so much a matter of course that it is as necessary to be muddy, as it is to be smokebegrimed in London. In London there is soap and water, and in Pretoria there are, perhaps, clothes-brushes; but a man to be clean either in one place or the other must always be using his soap or his clothes-brush. There are many gardens in Pretoria,-for much of the vacant spaces is so occupied. The time will come in which the gardens will give place to buildings, but in the mean time they are green and pleasant-looking. Perhaps the most peculiar feature of the place is the roses. There are everywhere hedges of roses, hedges which are all roses, not wild roses but our roses of the garden though generally less sweet to the smell. And with the roses, there are everywhere weeping willows, mourning gracefully over the hitherto unaccomplished aspirations of the country. This tree, which I believe to have been imported from St. Helena, has become common to the towns and homesteads of the Transvaal. To the eye that is strange to them the roses and weeping willows are very pretty; but, as with everything else in the world, their very profusion and commonness detracts from their

value. The people of Pretoria think no more of their roses, than do those of Bermuda of their oleanders.

In such towns the smallness of the houses is not the characteristic which chiefly produces the air of meanness which certainly strikes the visitor, nor is it their distance from each other, nor their poverty; but a certain flavour of untidiness which is common to all new towns and which is, I fear, unavoidable. Brandy bottles and sardine boxes meet the eye everywhere. Tins in which pickled good things have been conveyed accumulate themselves at the corners. The straw receptacles in which wine is nowadays conveyed meet the eye constantly, as do paper shirt-collars, rags, old boots, and fragments of wooden cases. There are no dust holes and no scavengers, and all the unseemly relics of a hungry and thirsty race of pioneers are left open to inspection.

And yet in spite of the mud, in spite of the brandy bottles, in spite of the ubiquitous rags Pretoria is both picturesque and promising. The efforts are being made in the right direction, and the cottages which look lowly enough from without have an air of comfort within. I was taken by a gentleman to call on his wife,—an officer of our army who is interested in the gold fields of the Transvaal,—and I found that they had managed to gather round them within a very small space all the comforts of civilized life. There was no front door and no hall; but I never entered a room in which I felt myself more inclined to "rest and be thankful." I made various calls, and always with similar results. I found internal prettinesses, with roses and weeping willows outside which reconciled me to sardine boxes, paper collars, and straw liquor-guards.

In the middle of Pretoria is a square, round which

are congregated the public offices, the banks, hotels, and some of the chief stores, or shops of the place, and in which are depastured the horses of such travellers as choose to use the grass for the purpose. Ours, I hope, were duly fed within their stables; but I used to see them wandering about, trying to pick a bit of grass in the main square. And here stands the Dutch Reformed Church, in the centre, a large building, and as ugly as any building could possibly be made. Its clergyman, quite a young man, called upon me while I was in Pretoria, and told me that his congregation was spread over an area forty miles round. The people of the town are regular attendants; for the Dutchman is almost always a religious father of a family, thinking much of all such services as were reverenced by his fathers before him. But the real congregation consists of the people from the country who flock into the Nichtmaal, or Lord's Supper, once in three months, who encamp or live in their waggons in the square round the Church, who take the occasion to make their town purchases and to perform their religious services at the same time. The number attending is much too large to enter the church at once, so that on the appointed Sunday one service succeeds another. The sacrament is given, and sermons are preached, and friends meet each other, amid the throng of the waggons. The clergyman pressed me to stay and see it; -but at this time my heart had begun to turn homewards very strongly. I had come out to see Pretoria, and, having seen it, was intent upon seeing London once again.

There are various other churches,-all of them small edifices, in the place, among which there is a place of worship for the Church of England. And there is a resident English clergyman, a University man, who if he

live long enough and continue to exercise his functions at Pretoria will probably become the "clergyman of the place." For such is the nature of Englishmen. Now that the Transvaal is an English Colony there can be no doubt but that the English clergyman will become the "clergyman of the place."

I would fain give as far as it may be possible an idea to any intending emigrant of what may be the cost of living in Pretoria. Houses are very dear,—if hired; cheap enough if bought. When I was there in September, 1877, the annexation being then four months old, a decent cottage might be bought for seven or eight hundred pounds, for which a rental of seven or eight pounds a month would be demanded. A good four-roomed house with kitchen, &c., might be built, land included, for a thousand pounds, the rent demanded for which would be from £150 to £175 a year. Meat was about 6d. a pound, beef being cheaper and I think better than mutton. Butter, quite uneatable, was 2s. a pound. Eggs a shilling a dozen. Fowls Is. 6d. each. Turkeys, very good, 7s. 6d. to 9s. 6d. each. Coals 10s. a half hundredweight,and wood for fuel about £2 for a load of two and a half tons. These prices for fuel would add considerably to the cost of living were it not that fires are rarely necessary except for the purpose of cooking. Bread is quoted at Is. a loaf of two pounds, but was I think cheaper when I was there. Potatoes were very dear indeed, the price depending altogether on the period of the year and on the season. I doubt whether other vegetables were to be bought in the market, unless it might be pumpkins. Potatoes and green vegetables the inhabitant of Pretoria should grow for himself. And he should be prepared to live without butter. Why the butter of South Africa should be almost always uneatable, culminating into an