Excerpt from John Batman, the Founder of Victoria

Tm: birth of great nations is always regarded with interest. The Roman historians, unable to penetrate the gloom of their past and unwilling to claim a contemptible origin, boldly allied themselves with the celestial Olympus, and made their Romulus the son of a god. A Niebuhr has shattered the fairy fabric of those early days, and robbed our youth of the charm ing tale of wolf-nursed heroes. Yet who that trod the palaces of the Cm'sars, and wondered at the glory of old Rome, would not throw a glance backward, and wish to know the source of so much majesty! And here, in this Melbourne of today, with its one hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants, and its noble Inter colonial Exhibition, as we look upon a sixty-feet pyramid of Victorian gold. Can we be otherwise than deeply interested in the origin of our colony!

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