, and the most fruitful hollows; shaggy everywhere with luxuriant
vegetation; set under magnificent skies, in the mirror of the summer
seas; offering everywhere the grandest sudden outlooks and contrasts.
His Letters represent a placidly cheerful riding life: a pensive humor,
but the thunder-clouds all sleeping in the distance. Good relations
with a few neighboring planters; indifference to the noisy political
and other agitations of the rest: friendly, by no means romantic
appreciation of the Blacks; quiet prosperity economic and domestic: on
the whole a healthy and recommendable way of life, with Literature very
much in abeyance in it.

He writes to Mr. Hare (date not given): "The landscapes around me here
are noble and lovely as any that can be conceived on Earth. How indeed
could it be otherwise, in a small Island of volcanic mountains,
far within the Tropics, and perpetually covered with the richest
vegetation?" The moral aspect of things is by no means so good; but
neither is that without its fair features. "So far as I see, the Slaves
here are cunning, deceitful and idle; without any great aptitude for
ferocious crimes, and with very little scruple at committing others. But
I have seen them much only in very favorable circumstances. They are,
as a body, decidedly unfit for freedom; and if left, as at present,
completely in the hands of their masters, will never become so, unless
through the agency of the Methodists." [9]

In the Autumn came an immense hurricane; with new and indeed quite
perilous experiences of West-Indian life. This hasty Letter, addressed
to his Mother, is not intrinsically his remarkablest from St. Vincent:
but the body of fact delineated in it being so much the greatest, we
will quote it in preference. A West-Indian tornado, as John Sterling
witnesses it, and with vivid authenticity describes it, may be
considered worth looking at.

"_To Mrs. Sterling, South Place, Knightsbridge, London_.
"BRIGHTON, ST. VINCENT, 28th August, 1831.

"MY DEAR MOTHER,--The packet came in yesterday; bringing me some
Newspapers, a Letter from my Father, and one from Anthony, with a few
lines from you. I wrote, some days ago, a hasty Note to my Father,
on the chance of its reaching you through Grenada sooner than any
communication by the packet; and in it I spoke of the great misfortune
which had befallen this Island and Barbadoes, but from which all those
you take an interest