o 6 TROPICAL EDUCATION. 



reduced gentlewoman's outlook upon life ; views formed 

 in the Tropics correct this refractive influence by a certain 

 genial and tolerant virile expansion, not to be learned at 

 the Common, Clapham. 



To one whose economic pendulum has hitherto oscillated 

 between selfish luxury in May-fair and squalid poverty in 

 Seven Dials, there is indeed a world of novelty in the first 

 view of the tropical poverty that is not squalid but con- 

 tentedly luxurious of the dusky father with his wife or 

 wives (the mere number is a detail) sprawling at full 

 length, half clad, in the eye of the sun, before the palm- 

 thatched hut, while the fat black babies and the fat black 

 little pigs wallow together almost indistinguishably in the 

 dust at his side, just out of reach of the muscular foot 

 that might otherwise of pure wantonness molest them. 

 What a flood of light it all casts upon the future possi- 

 bilities of society, that leisured, cultureless household, on 

 whose garden-plot yam or bread-fruit or bananas or sweet 

 potatoes can be grown in sufficient quantity to support 

 the family without more labour than in England would 

 pay for its kitchen coals ; where the hut is but a shelter 

 from rain, or a bed-curtain for night, and where the 

 untaxed sun supplies the place of a drawing-room fire all 

 the year round, and warms the water for the baby's bath 

 at nothing the gallon ! If there is any man who doesn't 

 sympathise with his dusky brother when he sees him thus 

 at home in his airy palace any man who doesn't frater- 

 nise closely with his kind when thus brought face to face 

 with our primitive existence, I don't envy him bis stern 

 and wild Caledonian ethics. The beach-comber instinct 

 should be strong in all sane minds. Or if that blunt way 



