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124 THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE PORT PHILLIP PRESS. The progress of National Literature indicates a people emerging from barbarism into civilization, or, advancing from a rude, unsettled position to one of leisure and comfort. When Port Phillip was but a sheep walk, Melbourne simply received stores and transmitted them to country stations. A nomadic state of society is not favourable to men* tal culture. As the town grew there arose the necessity of a medium of communication. Some wanted to buy and some to sell. Mr. John Pascoe Fawkner was the first to supply this desideratum. Nine years before the time to which we now refer, he had started a paper in Laun ceston. In the capacity of an hotel keeper, he associated the ghosts of departed poets and philosophers With spirits of a less intellectual order. In the advertisement of his hotel, in 1838, a couple of lines suffice to tell the public that the usual requisites of an Inn are of the best quality, but a dozen lines are expended in the detail of the literary attractions and privileges of his house. We are referred to English and Colonial Newspapers, Home Reviews, Novels, Poetry, Theology) History and a late Encyclopedia. Now we dare avow our conviction that no other man in these Colonies, or perhaps in the whole world, ever showed such solicitude for the intellectual improvement of the frequenters of his tap and parlour, as did this Father of the Port Phillip Press. In the city of Tea tree and Gum trees it was not likely that the ini tiation of the Press would be on a great scale. On the contrary, the first paper was a manuscript one. It appeared on the first of January, 1838 ; “ to which,” as Mr. Westgarth tell us, “ the people had free access for the perusal of commercial advertisements, interlarded with paragraphs of local gossip or contentions.” It consisted of four pages of foolscap. The first contained the Leader. The second, third, and fourth pages gave advertisements of goods for sale, ships arriving and departing, &c., &c. Only one copy of the first number is known to be in existence, and is now in the possession of Capt. Lonsdale. William Archer, Esq., the talented author of “Statistics of Victoria,” having been permitted to take a copy of the same, courteously favoured us with an inspection of this curiosity of Literature. We present the first page.
