Most of these are long since the fathers of
families, native Australians, including sons who not unfrequently
finished their education in the mother country--a dutiful deference
which Australia may surely not yet quarrel with. This habit is still
strong, even to the third generation in Victoria, amongst her well-to-do
colonists. The youths may not expect better training than from a Hearn
or a McCoy, an Irving or a Pearson, on the colonial floor; but such
diversion from rule will, in its occasional way, the better help to keep
the great scattering family united to their venerable mother--to keep
together the elder and the younger Britain.
Oxford and Cambridge in particular have, indeed, been quite run upon
from Victoria, and those two venerable mothers of English university
life can already command in and of that colony quite a small legion of
their alumni--the Clarkes and "Loddon" Campbells, the Finlays and
"Colac" Robertsons, the Websters and Westbys and Wilsons, who are now
the young or the still vigorous life of their colony. If some few of
these have remained permanently at Home, or if they pleasantly alternate
their domicile by such facile means as the marvels of modern
inter-communication afford them, yet all of them help, in more or less
degree, to strengthen that tie between the mother and her adventurous
colonial offspring which we must hope is never to be broken.
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