32 



TROPICAL EDUCATION. 



There are evils inherent in tropical life which, as a noble 

 lord remarks of nature generally, " no preacher can 

 heal." But viewed as education, like Saint-Simon's 

 thieving, it is all valuable. I should think most men 

 who have once passed through a tropical experience 

 would no more wish that full chapter blotted out of 

 their lives than they would consent to lose their 

 university culture, their Continental travel, or their 

 literary, scientific, or artistic education. 



And what are the elements of this tropical curriculum 

 which give it such immense educational value ? I think 

 they are manifold. A few only may be selected as of 

 typical importance. 



In the first place, because first in order of realisation, 

 there is its value as a mental boulcversement, a revolu- 

 tion in ideas, a sort of moral and intellectual cold 

 shower-bath, a nervous shock to the system generally. 

 The patient or pupil gets so thoroughly upset in all his 

 preconceived ideas ; he finds all round him a life so 

 different from the life to which he has been accustomed 

 in colder regions, that he wakes up suddenly, rubs his 

 eyes hard, and begins to look about him for some general 

 explanation of the world he lives in. It is good for the 

 ordinary man to get thus unceremoniously upset. Take 

 the average young intelhgence of the London streets, 

 with its glib ideas already formed from supply and 

 demand in a civilised country, where soil is appropriated, 

 and classes distinct, and commodities drop as it were 

 from the clouds upon the middle-class breakfast-table— 

 take such an intelligence, self-satisfied and empty, and 

 place its possessor all at once in a new environment, where 



