him to endeavour to save the one, and to render his negro fit for the continuation of the other. In cases of the slightest danger, therefore, the doctor is sent for, and obliged immediately to attend; when, if the peril prove greater than was expected, he continues with his patient till he sees a change for the better; and if no such favourable alteration take place, the invalid is sure to go home before the doctor. Oh ye whose hearts are bent upon doing good, ye whose motives are pure and unsophisticated, ye who would relieve real misery, ye who would pour a balm to close the wounds of hearts that have been crushed, and spirits broken by the curse of poverty and want; ye who would have mothers bless and children pray for you, turn not your hearts to the emancipation of negroes, but look rather to emancipate from their woes such of your own countrymen as are oppressed with the horrors of poverty, or the miseries of disease; of those who know what it is to be poor in the midst of wealth, and famishing in the midst of plenty. The slaves, although in a degraded state, are not yet sufficiently capable of feeling their degradation; as they are well treated, they are for the most part happy and contented; at any rate, their wants are supplied; they have food for their bodies, and covering for their heads. But there are Englishmen, free born Englishmen, who have starving wives and starving families, with no food but their misery, no bed but the cold earth, no covering but the canopy of heaven;-first, then, look to such as these, and extend to them humanity and relief: for what think ye of the charity of that man who would snatch their last morsel from the mouths of his own children to bestow it on the offspring of a stranger? I am no friend to slavery; heaven forbid! I am its unalterable and unbending enemy: nevertheless, I know that there is a time for all things; and I know, too, that the time for slave emancipation is not yet come. We next repaired to the nursery, which was a large and very airy room, full of young negroes. Some old and stout enough to crawl about, or even to stand upon their legs, and others lying kicking in their trays, which stood scattered about the floor, and which, for safety, are considerably better than a cot or cradle, since no harm could accrue to the child if he chanced to roll out. An old nurse, who sat in one corner of the room, had the care of these naked younglings; and truly they thrived well under her charge from the youngest to the eldest, from the fairest to the blackest, all were plump as puddings, and as fat as pigs. I would that they had resembled this latter animal in their grunting only; but alas, they must needs imitate their squeaking also; and mine ears were regaled with squalling and mewling, to a miracle; also the tinkling of a little bell, and the beating of a little drum, which some lover of music had presented to a pair of this young and promising assembly. There was the song celestial, and the tattoo terrestrial, and the squeak direct; ma foi! I had never heard such a concert of vocal and instrumental music before; and heaven grant that I may never hear it again. Barnet could form no idea of it; Bishop himself would have been astounded; Lee would have kept on the weather side of such a band; and even the apollonicon of Flight and Robson, which contains the sound of every instrument, could hardly have produced such sounds as those. In goodly sooth, they were a noisy group, and I blessed my fortunate stars as soon as I got out of hearing of their clatter; nevertheless, they had sleek skins and glossy, and might have merited more than some of our modern sages the appellation of " "shining lights in a dark generation.” It was now getting late, and we therefore returned to the great house, where we partook of a luncheon which the ladies had prepared for us, with their usual kindness: our hospitable friends even pressed us to dine with them again; this we, however, refused; and after expressing our high sense of their kind attentions, we took our departure for, and after an oppressive ride, arrived without further accident, in the homes, not of our worthy and important ancestors, kind reader, but of our still more worthy and important selves. CHAPTER XIV. CODRINGTON COLLEGE. "Tu* Vitam (si quid mea carmina possunt) Omnibus, ornatum Marti Rhedycina furenti "Credidit invita, et tanto se jactat Alumno. "Hunc nempe ardorem atque immensos pectoris æstus In a preceding chapter I gave some account of the situation of Codrington College, with a brief description of the building, and did not quit so interesting a subject without promising my readers to resume it at some future period. I will now keep my word. The remarks, however, which I meant to have made, respecting the institution, and the intentions of its founder, are rendered unnecessary, by the quotation of some public documents, with which I shall present my reader in their stead. These papers contain extracts from * Insig. Dom. Christoph. Codrington. unus ex Regii Satellitii Præfectis. H annual reports, relative to Codrington College, with two views of the building itself; and I need make no apology for inserting them in this work, since they cannot fail of creating the greatest interest in the public mind; containing, as they do, the most important information respecting an institution which is the only one of its kind founded in the West Indies. The first of these reports was of the year 1710, and they were continued annually to the year 1828.* I shall however limit these extracts to the time when they began to excite most interest, which was from the years 1819 to 1820-which state that "at the commencement of the last century, General Codrington bequeathed his two plantations in the "island of Barbados to the Society, with direction "❝that a convenient number of professors and scho"lars should be maintained there, leaving the parti"culars of the constitution to the Society, composed "of wise and good men :' since that period, after many difficulties, arising from law-suits with the "executor, the erection of a college at considerable expense, and the devastations occasioned by fre"quent hurricanes, an establishment has been formed " and supported with the produce of the estates, consisting of a president and twelve scholars; stipends being allowed to those who may be desirous of pro"secuting their studies in England, either in divinity, law, or physic. A minister has also been provi"ded for the negroes, whose sole attention is to be I believe that annual statements are still made respecting the institution by those to whom the College is entrusted. |