time have been a place of considerable importance, and even now it has a very different appearance from those that I have just mentioned. It is more like a goodly English town than any other that I saw in any of the smaller British islands. It is well built, though built up and down steep hills, and contains large and comfortable houses. The market-place also looks like a market-place, and there are shops in it, in which trade is apparently carried on and money made.

Indeed, Grenada was once a prince among these smaller islands, having other islands under it, with a Governor supreme, instead of tributary. It was fertile also, and productive-in every way of importance.

But now here, as in so many other spots among the West Indies, we are driven to exclaim, Ichabod! The glory of our Grenada has departed, as has the glory of its great namesake in the old world. The houses, though so goodly, are but as so many Alhambras, whose tenants now are by no means great in the world's esteem.

All the hotels in the West Indies are, as I have said, or shall say in some other place, kept by ladies of colour; in the most part by ladies who are no longer very young. They are generally called familiarly by their double name. Betsy Austen, for instance; and Caroline Lee. I went to the house of some such lady in St. Georges, and she told me a woful tale of her miseries. She was Kitty something, I think-soon, apparently, to become Kitty of another world. "An hotel," she said. "No; she kept no hotel now-a-days-what use was there for an hotel in St. Georges? She kept a lodging-house; though, for the matter of that, no lodgers ever came nigh her. That little granddaughter of hers sometimes sold a bottle of ginger beer; that was all." It must be hard for living eyes to see one's trade die off in that way.

There is a feminine accomplishment so much in vogue among the ladies of the West Indies, one practised there with a success so specially brilliant, as to make it deserving of special notice. This art is one not wholly confined to ladies, although, as in the case with music, dancing, and cookery, it is to be looked for chiefly among the female sex. Men, indeed, do practise it in England, the West Indies, and elsewhere; and as Thalberg and Soyer are greatest among pianists and cooks, so perhaps are the greatest adepts in this art to be found among the male practitioners ;-elsewhere, that is, than in the West Indies. There are to be found ladies never equalled in this art by any effort of manhood. I speak of the science of flirting.

And be it understood that here among these happy islands no idea of impropriety-perhaps remembering some of our starched people at home, I should say criminality—is attached to the pursuit. Young ladies flirt, as they dance and play, or eat and drink, quite as a matter of course. There is no undutiful, unfilial idea of waiting till mamma's back be turned; no uncomfortable fear of papa; no longing for secluded corners, so that the world should not see. The doing of anything that one is ashamed of is bad. But as regards flirting, there is no such doing in the West Indies. Girls flirt not only with the utmost skill, but with the utmost innocence also. Fanny Grey, with her twelve admirers, required no retired corners, no place apart from father, mother, brothers, or sisters. She would perform with all the world around her as some other girl would sing, conscious that in singing she would neither disgrace herself nor her masters.

It may be said that the practice of this accomplishment will often interfere with the course of true love.

Perhaps so, but I doubt whether it does not as often assist it. It seemed to me that young ladies do not hang on hand in the West Indies. Marriages are made up there with apparently great satisfaction on both sides; and then the flirting is laid aside-put by, at any rate, till the days of widowhood, should such evil days come. The flirting is as innocent as it is open, and is confined to ladies without husbands.

It is confined to ladies without husbands, but the victims are not bachelors alone. No position, or age, or state of health secures a man from being drawn, now into one and now into another Circean circle, in which he is whirled about, sometimes in a most ridiculous manner, jostled amongst a dozen neighbours, left without power to get out or to plunge further in, pulled back by a skirt at any attempt to escape, repulsed in the front at every struggle made to fight his way through.

Rolling about in these Charybdis pools are, perhaps, oftenest to be seen certain wearers of red coats; wretches girt with tight sashes, and with gilding on their legs and backs. To and fro they go, bumping against each other without serious injury, but apparently in great discomfort. And then there are black-coated strugglers, with white neck-ties, very valiant in their first efforts, but often to be seen in deep grief, with heads thoroughly submersed. And you may see gray-haired sufferers with short necks, making little useless puffs, puffs which would be so impotent were not Circe merciful to those shortnecked gray-haired sufferers.

If there were, as perhaps there should be, a college in the West Indies, with fellowships and professorships, -established with the view of rewarding proficiency in this science-Fanny Grey should certainly be elected warden, or principal, or provost of that col

lege. Her wondrous skill deserves more than mere praise, more than such slight glory as my ephemeral pages can give her. Pretty, laughing, brilliant, clever Fanny Grey! Whose cheeks ever were so pink, whose teeth so white, whose eyes so bright, whose curling locks so raven black! And then who ever smiled as she smiled? or frowned as she can frown? Sharply go those brows together, and down beneath the gurgling pool sinks the head of the red-coated wretch, while with momentary joy up pops the head of another, who is received with a momentary smile.

Yes; oh my reader! it is too true, I also have been in that pool, making, indeed, no wilful struggles, attempting no Leander feat of swimming, sucked in as my steps unconsciously strayed too near the dangerous margin ; sucked in and then buffeted about, not altogether unmercifully when my inaptitude for such struggling was discovered. Yes; I have found myself choking in those Charybdis waters, have glanced into the Circe cave. I have been seen in my insane struggles. But what shame of that? All around me, from the old patriarch dean of the island to the last subaltern fresh from Chatham, were there as well as I.

CHAPTER XII.

BRITISH GUIANA.

WHEN I settle out of England, and take to the colonies. for good and all, British Guiana shall be the land of my adoption. If I call it Demerara perhaps I shall be better understood. At home there are prejudices against it I know. They say that it is a low, swampy, muddy strip of alluvial soil, infested with rattlesnakes, gallinippers, and musquitoes as big as turkey-cocks; that yellow fever rages there perennially; that the heat is unendurable; that society there is as stagnant as its waters; that men always die as soon as they reach it; and when they live are such wretched creatures that life is a misfortune. Calumny reports it to have been ruined by the abolition of slavery; milk of human kindness would forbid the further exportation of Europeans to this white man's grave; and philanthropy, for the good of mankind, would wish to have it drowned beneath its own rivers. There never was a land so ill spoken of and never one that deserved it so little. All the above calumnies I contradict; and as I lived there for a fortnight—would it could have been a month!--I expect to be believed.

If there were but a snug secretaryship vacant there