are given us to see or our ears to hear,-and he will instantly admit the wondrous difference between the lady of nature's ennobling, and the lady of the king's.

I don't know why, but I had always entertained a horror of Creoles. There was an unavowed association in my mind between them and niggers and brown sugar,-calibashes and cowries, with a little touch of the yellow fever. I fancied them inert, sawney (is sawney a corruption of sournois ?) and though peppery as their own pimento, sickening as their guava. I could not bring myself to fancy them real right earnest ladies. They seemed destined to be put in spirits, like other Caribbean insects, or stuffed for a museum.

soon.

I knew better now. I knew much better For as Soph. did not make her appearance during my visit, I asked permission to renew it; and Annie looked so pleased at the proposal, that I was bound to consider her Mrs. Greysdale, and to conclude that,

with an unmarried sister, she was still ignorant of my being a younger brother.

Blockhead that I was!-fine gentleman, rather, that I was!-These people knew no more of peerage jargon or exclusive impertinence, than I of those islands of the West which I now recognised as the fatherland of all that is sweetest in the world,-let alone sugar canes. They were genuinely glad to see me-first, as a well-bred stranger who had promptly assisted them in an emergency; afterwards, as an agreeable acquaintance, who took pleasure in their society.

Mrs. Greysdale, as if aware of the pranks my imagination was playing at their expense, not only frankly declared herself, at my second visit, in the person of Annie; but presented her sister to me as Miss Vavasour, with all the terseness of one of Dante's free-spoken heroines in the World of Shadows.

Ricordati di me che son la Pia.
Sienna mi fè-disfecemi Maremma:

that is, she told me that, born in Jamaica, they had been educated in England; and that falling into ill health shortly after her marriage with her Creole cousin, Richard Greysdale, she had been despatched to England, with her sister, for change of air; had settled herself at Sunning Hill, for the benefit of a purer atmosphere than London, and the advantage of vicinity to a royal physician; and that early in the spring, her husband and father would arrive to convey them back to their native country.

It was difficult so to qualify my congratulations on the benefit she said she had derived from the English climate, as to express my regret at her object being so far accomplished as to justify her departure.

"I own we are becoming impatient to get away," said Mrs. Greysdale, too little covetous of empty compliments to perceive my dilemma; "I was right glad to settle here. Severe illness is apt to make one selfish;

and all I

cared for was the freshness and the shade that promised me revival. But now that we have been living here for six lonely months, and I have got well enough to think of Sophronia as well as myself, I am beginning to discover that forest scenery is a very pleasant addition to a sociable home but that a long evening passes all the better for a plurality of voices. My health has not allowed me to mix in the society here. Soph. is too kind to leave me; and I am beginning to pity her sufficiently to wish for Mr. Greysdale and my father's arrival, to restore her to the pleasures of her age.”

When I came to know my new friends better, I could not help perceiving that Miss Vavasour's tastes were those of any age but her own; and that she was much more likely to enjoy the converse of nature in the open air, and books under a cheerful roof, than the society of drawling nigger-drivers-that hateful cross betwixt Cockney and Yankee,—or even the tabby coteries of Sunning Hill.

Sophronia was a rare creature. I have no doubt there might exist, even amid the exceeding coarseness of my own fine world, women as lavishly endowed by nature. But these are

mostly ruined by overtraining, - these are forced into excessive bloom by the hot-house of education. Sophronia Vavasour's mind had expanded as nature listed. A few years at a good English school had done little to tame down the lofty spirit of the young islander; albeit affording those elements of learning which now enabled her to find in her own mind a happy substitute for the peurilities of gossip life.

"Have a mind and examine it!"-might form a noble parallel to the dictum of Mickiewicz-" have a heart and examine it!"-I verily believe that if one of Lady Winstanley's daughters had been told to have a mind and examine it, she would have had a mind to blush, as for some indecent proposition. But Sophronia Vavasour not only had a mind and had