There is nothing like a ghastly war, an inscrutable election and a great rush of entertainment high and low to encourage the illusion that the plague time is over.

Hamilton came to Melbourne last week with a crescendoing blast and with a party at the State Library that had vast quantities of food and grog and a bar in the very midst of those green reading lamps that have always betokened a city’s devotion to the grandeur of reading in this place so endowed by Redmond Barry, the judge who sentenced Ned Kelly – even if it was Ned who won...