of light gathered
from a flash of nonsense. Hereafter point out for the 'appreciative'
study of your pupils all that is absurd in themselves, others, and the
universe in general; 't is an element largely provided, of course, to
meet a corresponding and grateful capacity for its enjoyment.

After my crab and coral causeway I came to the most exquisite thickets of
evergreen shrubbery you can imagine. If I wanted to paint paradise I would
copy this undergrowth, passing through which I went on to the settlement
at St. Annie's, traversing another swamp on another raised causeway. The
thickets through which I next rode were perfectly draped with the
beautiful wild jasmine of these woods. Of all the parasitical plants I
ever saw, I do think it is the most exquisite in form and colour, and its
perfume is like the most delicate heliotrope.

I stopped for some time before a thicket of glittering evergreens, over
which hung, in every direction, streaming garlands of these fragrant
golden cups, fit for Oberon's banqueting service. These beautiful
shrubberies were resounding with the songs of mocking birds. I sat there
on my horse in a sort of dream of enchantment, looking, listening, and
inhaling the delicious atmosphere of those flowers; and suddenly my eyes
opened, as if I had been asleep, on some bright red bunches of spring
leaves on one of the winter-stripped trees, and I as suddenly thought of
the cold northern skies and earth, where the winter was still inflexibly
tyrannising over you all, and, in spite of the loveliness of all that was
present, and the harshness of all that I seemed to see at that moment, no
first tokens of the spring's return were ever more welcome to me than
those bright leaves that reminded me how soon I should leave this scene of
material beauty and moral degradation, where the beauty itself is of an
appropriate character to the human existence it surrounds: above all,
loveliness, brightness, and fragrance; but below! it gives one a sort of
melusina feeling of horror--all swamp and poisonous stagnation, which the
heat will presently make alive with venomous reptiles.

I rode on, and the next object that attracted my attention was a very
startling and by no means agreeable one--an enormous cypress tree which
had been burnt stood charred and blackened, and leaning towards the road
so as to threaten a speedy fall across it, and on one of the limbs of this
great charcoal giant hung a dead rattlesnake. If