Yesterday Lord Hopetoun left England for Australis to take up his post as first Governor-General of the Australian Commonwealth, and Mr. Rudyard Kipling celebrated the event with a poem in the "Times," a poem full of patriotic enthusiasm, but to the ordinary reader just a Tittle bit obscure in its meaning. On the previous evening Lord Hopetoun was enter-ined at a great farewell banquet, at which Mr. Chamberlain was to have presided. The General Election, howerer, kept away not only Mr. Chamberlain, but many other prominent commoners, and the chair was taken by Lord Selborne. Tt was nevertheless a most brilliant gathering. The parliamentary heads of the Navy and Army—Mr. Goschen and Lord Lansdown—were both there to glorify the deeds of our soldiers and sailors in China and South Africa; and Lord Hopetoun himself delivered a fine oration, full of sentiment enthusiasm, on the future of Federated Australia,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.