ness he shares with the Contessa must be something of a very different character from that which he would have had with Rose; higher, perhaps, as mere love (you all say) is the highest; but different and in some things, perhaps, scarcely so homely-sweet.

very angry at Rose; the ladies shook or another, but I am sure that the happitheir heads at her, and said how very, very hard it was on poor Mr. Incledon. But Mr. Incledon was gone, and Whitton shut up, while Rose still remained with all the excitement of a pretty wedding in prospect, and "a perfect romance in the shape of a love-story. Gradually, therefore, the girl was forgiven; the When Rose heard of this, which she did richer neighbours went up to town and in the harbour of an Italian port, she was bought their presents, the poorer ones moved by interest so true and lively that looked over their stores to see what they her husband was almost jealous. She could give, and the girls made pieces of read her mother's letter over and over, lace for her, and pin-cushions, and anti- and could not be done talking of it. Capmacassars; and thus her offence was tain Wodehouse after a while had to go condoned by all the world. Though Mrs. on shore, and his wife sat on the deck Damerel asked but a few people to the while the blue waves grew bluer and breakfast, the church was crowded to see bluer with evening under the great ship, the wedding, and all the gardens in the and the Italian sky lost its bloom of sunparish cut their best roses for its decora- set, and the stars came out in the magical tion; for this event occurred in July, heavens. What a lovely scene it was, the end of the rose season. Dinglefield the lights in the houses twinkling and Church overflowed with roses, and the rising tier on tier, the little lamps quiverbridesmaids' dresses were trimmed withing at the mastheads, the stars in the sky. them, and every man in the place had some sort of a rosebud in his coat. And thus it was half smothered in roses that the young people went away.

Rose shut her soft eyes, which were wet - was it with dew? and saw before her not the superb Genoa and the charmed Italian night, but the little Green with its Mr. Incledon was not heard of for sunburnt grass and the houses standing years after; but quite lately he came round, in each one of which friendly eyes back to Whitton married to a beautiful were shining. She saw the green old Italian lady, for whose sake it was, origi-drawing-room of the White House, and nally, as Rumour whispered, that he had the look he cast upon her as he turned remained unmarried so long. This lady and went away. That was the day when had married and forsaken him nearly the great happiness of her life came upon twenty years before, and had become a her; and yet she had lost something, she widow about the time that he left Eng- could not tell what, when Mr. Incledon land. I hope, therefore, that though went away. And now he was married, Rose's sweet youth and freshness had and to his old love, some one who had attracted him to her, and though he had gone before herself in his heart, and regarded her with deep tenderness, hop- came after her, and was its true owner. ing, perhaps, for a new, subdued, yet Rose shed a few tears quite silently happy life through her means, there had in the soft night, which did not bebeen little passion in him to make his tray her. Her heart contracted for a wound bitter after the mortification of moment with a strange pang was she the moment. The Contessa was a wo-jealous of this unknown woman? "God man of his own age, who had been beau-bless him!" she said to herself, with a tiful, and was magnificent, a regal kind little outburst of emotion. Did not she of creature, at home amid all the luxuries which his wealth provided, and filling a very different position from anything that could have been attainable by Rose. They dazzle the people on the Green when they are at Whitton, and the Contessa is as gracious and more inaccessible than any queen. She smiles at them all benignly, and thinks them an odd sort of gentle savages, talking over their heads in a voice which is louder and rounder than suits with English notions. And it is reported generally that Mr. Incledon and his foreign wife are not happy." I cannot say anything about this one way

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owe him all she had in the world? good right had Rose to bid "God bless him!" but yet there was an undisclosed shade of feeling which was not joy in his happiness, lingering in her heart.

"Do you think we could find out who this Contessa is?" she said to her husband, when he returned. "I hope she is a good woman, and will make him happy." Yes," said Captain Wodehouse, "he is a good fellow, and deserves to be happy; and now you can be comfortable, my dear, for you see he has consoled himself," he added, with a laugh.

did either the Hebrew Chaldæan moral- Western; and in 1667 the gallant Bataizer. Let us take the world as we find vian tubs sailed slowly but not reluctantit; speed, however regretfully, the part-ly away, just as the semi-piratical flag of ing guest; and get ready a cheerful St. George and merry England speckled countenance, as best we may, to greet the offing of St Thomas. the coming.

So the island changed masters, and the “oath of British commerce" replaced awhile the corresponding guttural expletives of Dutch trade. But the quicker workings of the English brain, the naturally sluggish Teutonic fibre of which is, as no less an authority than Mr. Matthew Arnold assures us, abnormally stimulated into incongruous activity by a lucky aspersion of brisker Celtic blood, required scarce five years to solve the problem that the Batavian intellect had with difficulty accomplished in ten. Like their predecessors, however, the newcomers solved it with a negative - a mistaken solution, as subsequent events have proved - and in 1671 the British ensign too fluttered off to larger and more fertile isles.

Farewell, then, the Old World, and welcome the New; nay, even the newest of the new, West Indian St. Thomas. No chroniclers need we consult here, for there is next to nothing to chronicle; no voluminous historical records, where there is hardly any history to record. Scarce visited towards the close of his career by Columbus, scornfully abandoned by Spain, that only just condescended to bestow on them from a distance the title of "Virgin," equivalent in this particular instance, I suppose, to "Barren," Islands, these smallest, driest, rockiest of the diminutive, rocky, arid, lesser Antilles remained for a century and a half after the mighty world-seeker had turned away from them wholly untenanted, or at best the chance resting- "Tarde venientibus ossa," is a hemistich place of buccaneering adventurers, un- not less applicable to the great banquet annexed by any nationality, unsheltered that Nature spreads before her children, by any flag. The very Caribs, the ques- than to the monkish refectory of the tionable authors of some undeciphered middle ages. Thus it was with the West scratchings on a sea-side cliff or two, Indies, where the late-arriving Danes, had left them; and no European, no Af- long after the more enterprising firstrican, had cared to enter on the aban- comers, Spanish, English, and French, doned heritage. So late as 1650 St. had divided among themselves every Thomas lay as unclaimed by any of the fleshy tit-bit, were fain to put up with the respectabilities of the world as Oliver scraggy virginal bones of the least among Twist, or Ginx's Baby at the workhouse the lesser Antilles for their share. Of door better off, indeed, than those re- St. Croix, popularly known as Santa markable infants, in that it was already Cruz, an island larger and of better prompossessed somehow of a name, the identi-ise than St. Thomas, to the south of cal one that it yet bears; though who con- which it lies at a distance of about forty ferred on it that distinction has remained miles, these Scandinavian Berserkers an unanswered question in the cate- to borrow a flower of nomenclature from chism of history. popular rhetoric — had indeed already, after a sharp struggle with Spanish and French rivals, taken possession; and now, in 1672, seeing St. Thomas absolutely vacant, and a first-rate harbour, if nothing else, ready to hand, they appropriated the Dutch-and-English-deserted island.

At last it was in A.D. 1657 — those most sedentary, most erratic of mortals, the Dutch, tentatively anchored their broad-built ships in the best of West Indian harbours, and took possession for their own of the forty square miles of rock in the centre of which that harbour is set like a green-blue turquoise in a rusty I do not envy the feelings of his Exiron ring. Ten years Dutch bales lum-cellency the gallant Iversen when welbered the beach; and Dutch merchant comed as the first Danish governor over sailors, under an embryo Dutch Govern- forty square miles of volcanic rock by ment, sat meditative beside. But after the only surviving inhabitants, the melmuch consumption of tobacco, scheedam, ancholy wood-pigeons and sinister landand thought in the monotonous contem-crabs, of St. Thomas. Nor do I envy the plation of dried-up bushes and brown negro slaves who first toiled at clearing rock, the Hollanders came to the con- bush and levelling stony ground enough clusion that Java, Ceylon, and the East- to make space for the diminutive square ern Indies offered better investments for fort and incipient town of "Charlottetheir painstaking enterprise than the Amalia." Let us hope that Mark Tap

ley's mantle descended by some fortunate wilder mountains of St. John; the little anachronism on Danes and Africans Danish garrison, taken by surprise, was alike, and enwrapped them in a double soon cut to pieces, and the island lay at fold of jollity as they took possession of the mercy of the negroes, who having their new isle of Eden in its dark-purple never experienced any themselves now sphere of sea. showed none. Every house was burnt, Sixty years have passed, and half every estate ravaged, every white man Danish half Dutch for the persevering fled or perished; and through all the Hollanders had returned to their first bloodstained catalogue which enumerates love, but this time under the unassuming earth's wrong avenged by wrong, infaguise of a trading Brandenburg company mous oppression, and mad retaliation, St. Thomas uneventfully carries on its few pages are redder than these. For little trade with its wealthier neighbours, six months the insurgents held out besides affording a convenient shelter in against the forces sent against them from its harbour to storm-driven ships, and a St. Thomas, till at last, after many vicisplace of refit to the damaged victims of situdes of savage warfare, French assisthe West Indian cyclones. This avowed-tance, invoked from the neighbouring isly: perhaps, too, not a little business lands by the panic-stricken Danes, turned was done, though less openly, in the the scale in the favour of European skill; wrecking, smuggling, privateering, and the Africans were reduced not to subbuccaneering lines; for besides the prin- mission but to suicide, and four hundred cipal harbour there is many a deep calm self-slain corpses were found by the viccreek and quiet cove in the island where torious whites on one spot alone. And a cargo could be landed, a bargain struck, in truth those, happily the greater numor a sloop equipped without any need of ber, of the vanquished who thus opened incurring the troublesome enquiries of for themselves with their own hands that "whence and whither," where flags and only sure gate of freedom, death, did titles might pass unquestioned, and mu- wisely and well; their less fortunate tual profit hoodwink the Argus eyes of prisoner-comrades did not pass that gate any over-prying official. And if French- till after, tortures that few writers now men, Spaniards, or even English, suffered would dare so much as to describe. by these little transactions, were they Eastern Governments, Mahometan canot at liberty to go and do likewise on liphs and sultans, have been accused, and their own account? It was the good old not altogether unjustly, of frequent and West Indian usage, and international law wanton cruelty; but no Arab, Turk, or had not yet found a passage to the Carib-even Persian but would have shrunk bean archipelago. Such were the occu-back aghast from the cold-blooded, torpations of merchants and traders; mean- ment-devising atrocity of the triumphant while other colonists busied themselves Dutch and Danish slaveowners. with less venturesome pursuits on land, and the scanty soil of St. Thomas was cajoled, by dint of care and hard labour, into yielding a modicum of sugar, though surpassed in this respect by its sister is-ecutions. land called of St. John. A narrow arm Thirty years more passed unrecorded of sea, so narrow that an Enfield rifle for good or evil alike; till in 1764 the would easily select and reach its victim Royal Edict of Copenhagen that renacross the rippling strait, divides ordered the harbour of St. Thomas a free unites the fronting coasts. Each at this port inaugurated a new era - that of time owned a dense slave-population, re- commerce, merchandise, and prosperity. garded by the comparatively small caste Followed the struggle of the New of colonists and planters much as the Is- World, then awaking, province after raelites of old were by their Egyptian province, into self-consciousness and intaskmasters, and ruled over by a penal dependent life; and the Danish island, code of more than Pharaonic atrocity. | neutral, central, and marked out by NaBut in 1773 the sight of their own in- ture herself as the one haven of refuge creasing numbers quickened the long-for the countless sails that speckle these stifled exasperation of the Africans into tornado-swept seas, reaped directly and a hope of revenge, and a revolt was con- indirectly a full and ever-increasing share certed between the bondsmen of either of the golden harvest that was being island. Ineffective in St. Thomas, it planted the while on other lands in the broke out with deadly result among the blood f the labourers. The resort of

The awful hurricane that a few weeks later devastated the island of St. Thomas could not with all its rain-torrents wash out the red stains of those hideous ex

countless cruisers, half privateer, half | frangipane, aloe, cactus, and every thorny pirate; the mart of men who, under col- and prickly thing "for which we may our of serving national interests, ad- thank Adam." And thus matters have, vanced their own; the favourite exchange in the main, gone their course up to the for shoddy supply contracts; the char- present day. tered meet for unscrupulous speculators in dubious prizes and blockade-runnings, St. Thomas soon acquired a new importance; and with it a character that, however disguised or modified by more orderly times, and the necessity of cloaking illegal gains under forms of law, has never wholly left the place.

Shall we add how, in 1867, the American eagle cast a longing eye on this seagirt morsel? and how the majesty of Denmark, not less eager for I forget how many millions of dollars, dangled the tempting bait before the republican bird, till it was thought to be a bargain between them; only when it came to paySoon after the American war, the revo- ment, the greenbacks were not forthlutionary shock that upset so many Euro- coming, and one more repudiation of pean thrones made itself felt through agreement was noted in Jonathan's actheir far-off dependencies in the Carib- count book? Or shall we chronicle the bean Sea; and St. Thomas came in hurricanes of 1819, 1833, 1867, and 1871 ; among the rest for a share in the vicissi- or depict the terrors of the earthquake tudes of which Denmark had so large plus sea-wave that, on the third of the and so disastrous a part. For a short above-assigned dates, made such a mark time in 1801, and again in 1807, England upon the imaginations of the inhabitants held with a careless grasp a post the com- of St. Thomas? Enough; the stars and mercial value of which she might have the stripes have not yet supplanted the easily estimated from the flourishing con- Dannebrog on the fort heights, and, exdition in which she found it; but blind cept a headless palm or two, few traces of in 1815, as on so many other occasions, a cyclone outlast a twelvemonth; at any to her own best interests, she a third rate, none appear in view as we exchange time abandoned it, as she had first done the glossy blackness of Heaven and the when it was a mere barren rock a hun- Challenger best know how many thoudred and fifty years before; and the sand fathoms of the pure Atlantic depths white cross Dannebrog" again floated outside for the muddy green of shallow over fort and harbour. waters and an uncleanly harbour.

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From that date to the present, the an- "Charlotte-Amalia" is, so old Danish nals of St. Thomas are made up of ex-maps inform us, the name of the town; port, import, commissions, smuggling, and perhaps the gods still call it so; only, bill-broking, discounting, pilfering, and like the old knight's song in Alice's the ordinary vicissitudes of credit-com-"Wonderland," or Looking-glass". merce conducted on the unstable basis I am not sure which, neither of those auof New-World speculation. Meanwhile, thentic narratives forming part of my the emancipation of slaves, tardily wrung from, rather than conceded by, their Danish masters in 1848, gave the finishing stroke to the already declining sugar cultivation of the island; for what human being, however black, would, if his own free choice were given him, remain to toil at the lowest possible wages on the estates of a planter, while a single day's work among the shipping in the harbour might bring him higher gains than a whole week of spade and hoe? Negroes are not far-sighted, but have ordinarily a remarkably acute vision for what lies immediately before their ugly flat noses. So the canes, which nothing but highpressure slave-labour could ever possibly have made a paying crop of in this uncongenial soil, disappeared as if by enchantment, to be replaced with as magical a celerity for the cycle of tropical vegetation is a swift one- by scrubby bush,

travelling library, the more's the pity — it is called quite differently among mortals, in whose vocabulary it has appropriated to itself the apostolic-sounding designation of the entire island. But, whatever its name, the town looks pretty enough from the prow of the steamer as we pass between the lighthouse on our right and the two-gun fort on our left, and make for our anchorage; though an officer of the Elbe - sociable and chatty, as most of the R.M.S.P. Company's officers are informs me as I gaze upon it, that it shows still prettier when seen from the stern of the boat. I can readily believe him; for the same glance that tells me in the first half-minute whatever there is to like in the town of St. Thomas, tells me also what there is not.

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Part on, part between three buttresslike pyramidical spurs which run down seaward almost to the water's edge from