Six months in the West-Indies, in 1825

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NEVIS.

serrat is certainly lower than in any other of the Antilles. If a man would bring his resources with him, especially a wife, he might live in a delightful retirement in many of the sweet hill recesses of either of these islands. I should prefer Madeira indeed for a residence on account of its vicinity to England, and also because I have partly engaged to marry a lady there when we are both come to years of discretion, which all my friends declare to be equivalent to the Greek kalends with m e ; but I should often run down the trades, and spend the winter within the tropics. Not, however, that I would prejudice the twice venerable Temples twain by any outlandish comparisons; no ! Fortunati nimium, sua si bona norint Causidici !

and yet the law is a bore to a man of poetical imagination, which is odd enough, considering how it dealeth in the most novel and surprising fictions in the world. Mathematics are a bore of course, because Fancy starves at the surfeit of Reason; but why she should starve in law, where Heaven truly knows that Reason, poor soul, is often fain to look big upon a mighty scurvy dinner, is past my comprehension. Rut, no doubt, I have much to learn, and so we will say no more about the matter. For it is wisely remarked by the profound Lazarillo, that to understand to perfection the meanest art or science requires the greatest capacity and skill. If you bid a shoemaker, who has been thirty


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