thing but composure to the inevitable, happily inevitable day, when Australia shall follow in the same path.

We have risen so high that we may almost boast to have placed ourselves above national glory. The welfare of the coming world is now the proper care of the Anglo-Saxon race.

The coloured people, I have said, have made their way into society in Jamaica. That is, they have made a certain degree of impression on the millstone; which will therefore soon be perforated through and through, and then crumble to pieces like pumice-stone. Nay, they have been or are judges, attorneys-general, prime ministers, leaders of the opposition, and what not. The men have so far made their way. The difficulty

now is with the women.

And in high questions of society here is always the stumbling-block. All manners of men can get themselves into a room together without difficulty, and can behave themselves with moderate forbearance to each other when in it. But there are points on which ladies are harder than steel, stiffer than their brocaded silks, more obdurate than whalebone.

"He wishes me to meet Mrs. So-and-So," a lady said to me, speaking of her husband, "because Mr. So-andSo is a very respectable good sort of man. I have no objection whatever to Mr. So-and-So; but if I begin with her, I know there will be no end."

"Probably not," I said; "when you once commence, you will doubtless have to go on-in the good path.' I confess that the last words were said sotto voce. On that occasion the courage was wanting in me to speak out my mind. The lady was very pretty, and I could not endure to be among the unfavoured ones.

"That is just what I have said to Mr.

; but he

never thinks about such things; he is so very imprudent. If I ask Mrs. So-and-So here, how can I keep out Mrs. Such-a-One? They are both very respectable, no doubt; but what were their grandmothers ?"

Ah! if we were to think of their grandmothers, it would doubtless be a dark subject. But what, O lady, of their grandchildren? That may be the most important, and also most interesting side from whence to view the family.

"These people marry now," another lady said to me -a lady not old exactly, but old enough to allude to such a subject; and in the tone of her voice I thought I could catch an idea that she conceived them in doing so to be trenching on the privileges of their superiors. "But their mothers and grandmothers never thought of looking to that at all. Are we to associate with the children of such women, and teach our daughters that vice is not to be shunned ?"

Ah! dear lady-not old, but sufficiently old-this statement of yours is only too true. Their mothers and grandmothers did not think much of matrimony-had but little opportunity of thinking much of it But with whom did the fault chiefly lie? These very people of whom we are speaking, would they not be your cousins but for the lack of matrimony? Your uncle, your father, your cousins, your grandfather, nay, your very brother, are they not the true criminals in this matterthey who have lived in this unhallowed state with women of a lower race? For the sinners themselves of either sex I would not ask your pardon; but you might forgive the children's children.

The life of coloured women in Jamaica some years since was certainly too often immoral. They themselves were frequently illegitimate, and they were not unwilling

that their children should be so also.

To such a one it

was preferable to be a white man's mistress than the wife of such as herself; and it did not bring on them the same disgrace, this kind of life, as it does on women in England, or even, I may say, on women in Europe, nor the same bitter punishment. Their master, though he might be stern enough and a tyrant, as the owner of slaves living on his own little principality might probably be, was kinder to her than to the other females around her, and in a rough sort of way was true to her. He did not turn her out of the house, and she found it to be promotion to be the mother of his children and the upper servant in his establishment. And in those days, days still so near to us, the coloured woman was a slave herself, unless specially manumitted either in her own generation or in that immediately above her. It is from such alliances as these that the coloured race of Jamaica has sprung.

But all this, if one cannot already boast that it is changed, is quickly changing. Matrimony is in vogue, and the coloured women know their rights, and are inclined to claim them.

Of course among them, as among us at home, and among all people, there are various ranks. There are but few white labourers in Jamaica, and but few negroes who are not labourers. But the coloured people are to be found in all ranks, from that of the Prime Ministerfor they have a Prime Minister in Jamaica-down to the worker in the cane-fields. Among their women many are now highly educated, for they send their children to English schools. Perhaps if I were to say fashionably educated, I might be more strictly correct. They love dearly to shine; to run over the piano with quick and loud fingers; to dance with skill, which they all do, for

they have good figures and correct ears; to know and display the little tricks and graces of English ladiessuch tricks and graces as are to be learned between fifteen and seventeen at Ealing, Clapham, and Hornsey.

But the coloured girls of a class below these-perhaps I should say two classes below them-are the most amusing specimens of Jamaica ladies. I endeavoured to introduce my readers to one at Port Antonio. They cannot be called pretty, for the upper part of the face almost always recedes; but they have good figures and well-turned limbs. They are singularly free from mauvaise honte, and yet they are not impertinent or illmannered. They are gracious enough with the pale faces when treated graciously, but they can show a very high spirit if they fancy that any slight is shown to them. They delight to talk contemptuously of niggers. Those people are dirty niggers, and nasty niggers, and mere niggers. I have heard this done by one whom I had absolutely taken for a negro, and who was not using loud abusive language, but gently speaking of an inferior class.

With these, as indeed with coloured people of a higher grade, the great difficulty is with their language. They cannot acquire the natural English pronunciation. As far as I remember, I have never heard but two negroes who spoke unbroken English; and the lower classes of the coloured people though they are not equally deficient, are still very incapable of plain English articulation. The "th" is to them, as to foreigners, an insuperable difficulty. Even Josephine, it may be remembered, was hardly perfect in this respect.

CHAPTER VI

JAMAICA-WHITE MEN.

Ir seems to us natural that white men should hold ascendency over those who are black or coloured. Although we have emancipated our own slaves, and done so much to abolish slavery elsewhere, nevertheless we regard the negro as born to be a servant. We do not realize it to ourselves that it is his right to share with us the high places of the world, and that it should be an affair of individual merit whether we wait on his beck or

he on ours. We have never yet brought ourselves so to think, and probably never shall. They still are to us a servile race. Philanthropical abolitionists will no doubt deny the truth of this; but I have no doubt that the conviction is strong with them-could they analyze their own convictions-as it is with others.

Where white men and black men are together, the white will order and the black will obey, with an obedience more or less implicit according to the terms on which they stand. When those terms are slavery, the white men order with austerity, and the black obey with alacrity. But such terms have been found to be prejudicial to both. Each is brutalized by the contact. The black man becomes brutal and passive as a beast of