nglish islands they are innocently happy in the unconsciousness of the
obligations of morality. They eat, drink, sleep, and smoke, and do the
least in the way of work that they can. They have no ideas of duty, and
therefore are not made uneasy by neglecting it. One or other of them
occasionally rises in the legal or other profession, but there is no
sign, not the slightest, that the generality of the race are improving
either in intelligence or moral habits; all the evidence is the other
way. No Uncle Tom, no Aunt Chloe need be looked for in a negro's cabin
in the West Indies. If such specimens of black humanity are to be found
anywhere, it will be where they have continued under the old influences
as servants in white men's houses. The generality are mere good-natured
animals, who in service had learnt certain accomplishments, and had
developed certain qualities of a higher kind. Left to themselves they
fall back upon the superstitions and habits of their ancestors. The key
to the character of any people is to be found in the local customs which
have spontaneously grown or are growing among them. The customs of
Dahomey have not yet shown themselves in the English West Indies and
never can while the English authority is maintained; but no custom of
any kind will be found in a negro hut or village from which his most
sanguine friend can derive a hope that he is on the way to mending
himself.

Roses do not grow on thorn trees, nor figs on thistles. A healthy human
civilisation was not perhaps to be looked for in countries which have
been alternately the prey of avarice, ambition, and sentimentalism. We
visit foreign countries to see varieties of life and character, to learn
languages that we may gain an insight into various literatures, to see
manners unlike our own springing naturally out of different soils and
climates, to see beautiful works of art, to see places associated with
great men and great actions, and subsidiary to these, to see lakes and
mountains, and strange skies and seas. But the localities of great
events and the homes of the actors in them are only saddening when the
spiritual results are disappointing, and scenery loses its charm unless
the grace of humanity is in the heart of it. To the man of science the
West Indies may be delightful and instructive. Rocks and trees and
flowers remain as they always were, and Nature is constant to herself.
But the traveller whose heart is with his kind, and who cares