This issue of the Australasian also includes:
An advertisement for the May 1868 issue of the Colonial Monthly.
An advertisement for St Paul's Magazine, 'a new monthly magazine of fiction, art and literature, edited by Anthony Trollope and illustrated by J. E. Millais.
An advertisement for the London Journal.
An advertisement for the Baptist periodical, the Christian Pioneer, available post free from Stillwell and Knight, Collins-street east, Melbourne.
H. T. Dwight, Bookseller, 'near Parliament, solicits inspection of his stock'.
An advertisement for the Melbourne printing firm, Stillwell and Knight.
Four once-stanza verses, each individually based on the following nursery rhymes: 'Sing a Song of Sixpence', 'Ride a Cock Horse', 'Hickory Dickory Dock' and 'Hey Diddle Diddle'.
'River Darling' responds to 'North Countryman's critique of travel options in western New South Wales.
Q. confesses that, in his railing against the supposed wrongdoing of R. H. Horne in relation to a re-working of Shakespeare's character 'Shylock', he has himself committed a wrong: 'I have leant upon the broken reed of the Sydney press and it has pierced my hand. I have done an injustice, and must repair it.' (For Q.'s original comments, see 'The Peripatetic Philosopher' Australasian, 11 April 1868: 465.)
Q. was misled by a Sydney newspaper report into believing that there had been a public performance of an adapted version of Shylock; in fact, Horne had created a 'dramatic speculation as to what might have passed through Shylock's mind on listening to certain parts of Portia's lines of defence, supposing the same trial ... had occurred in Venice in the present century'. Horne's speculation was performed by Walter Montgomery at a private entertainment.
Q. also comments on several political and social matters affecting Melbourne.
Jaques reviews productions of Lady of Lyons, Macbeth, Othello and The Merchant of Vencie at the Theatre Royal, and Under the Gaslight at the Duke of Edinburgh Theatre, focusing particularly on the quality of the acting.
An advertisement for Charles Haddon Spurgeon's sermons 'in large quantities', available from Buzzard, Melbourne.
