for such gratification of his laudable impulse by accepting
exclusion from "Society"--and when poor, he incurred almost invariably
his dismissal from employment. Of course, in all cases of the sort the
dispensers of such penalties were actuated by high motives which,
nevertheless, did not stand in the way of their meeting, in the
households of the persons thus obnoxious to punishment, the same or
even a lower class of Ethiopic damsels, under the title of
"housekeeper," on whom they lavished a very plethora of caresses.
Perhaps it may be wrong so to hint it, but, judging from indications in
his own book, our author himself would have been liable in those days
to enthralment by the piquant charms that proved irresistible to so
many of his brother-Europeans. It is almost superfluous to repeat that
the skin-discriminating policy induced as regards the coloured subjects
of the Queen since the [41] abolition of slavery did not, and could
not, operate when coloured and white stood on the same high level as
slave-owners and ruling potentates in the Colonies. Of course, when
the administrative power passed entirely into the hands of British
officials, their colonial compatriots coalesced with them, and found no
loss in being in the good books of the dominant personages.

In conclusion of our remarks upon the above extracts, it may be stated
that the blending of the races is not a burning question. "It can
keep," as Mr. Bright wittily said with regard to a subject of similar
urgency. Time and Nature might safely be left uninterfered with to
work out whatever social development of this kind is in store for the
world and its inhabitants.

BOOK I: BARBADOS

[41] Our distinguished voyager visited many of the British West Indies,
landing first at Barbados, his social experience whereof is set forth
in a very agreeable account. Our immediate business, however, is not
with what West Indian hospitality, especially among the well-to-do
classes, can and does accomplish for [42] the entertainment of
visitors, and particularly visitors so eminent as Mr. Froude. We are
concerned with what Mr. Froude has to say concerning our dusky brethren
and sisters in those Colonies. We have, thus, much pleasure in being
able at the outset to extract the following favourable verdict of his
respecting them--premising, at the same time, that the balcony from
which Mr. Froude surveyed the teeming multitude in Bridgetown was that
of a grand hot