I was discussing, with a gusto and earnestness that none but a famished sea-farer can thoroughly understand, the merits of a broiled chicken, some turtle steaks, guinea fowls, eggs, and other little delicacies, when my gastronomical devotions were interrupted by the return of Lieutenant W, the foot adjutant, accompanied by Captain B--, of the Engineers, the governor's private secretary, who was the bearer of a kind and hospitable invitation from his excellency to take up my quarters at Government-house. I had the honour of being connected with Colonel, now Major-General Sir Charles M-, by marriage; and, of course, did not hesitate to avail myself of the flattering offer. So, having despatched Polly Armytrading's captivating breakfast, I accompanied my newly-made acquaintances to Government-house. Having been welcomed in the kindest and most friendly manner, I was domiciliated beneath the governor's roof, while my quarters in the gar rison were being prepared. At Colonel M-'s well-appointed table I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Wilson, the president of the island, to whom I had been the bearer of a letter from the late Mr. Daniel Brock, the then high bailiff of Guernsey, Hospitality forms part and parcel of a West India planter's religion; and in this particular, the first of cardinal virtues is practised with exemplary devotion. West India hospitality, like the turtle and madeira in that favoured clime, is only to be met with in perfection on their own estates. The term hospitality is not understood in our own chilling country. There is no lack of show and ostentation; but of real, true, genuine hospitality, rarely is it to be found now-a-days. True it is that when we meet an old schoolfellow or college chum, an old brother officer or fellow-traveller, he will ask you to dine with him "one of these days;" but one of these days never comes. True hospitality comes from the heart; for it is a benevolent impulse, warmed into active operation by a tropical sun. Fogs, and a low temperature, stagnate and chill all social feeling; and friendships begotten in early life, although at fever heat during the earlier stage of their existence, dwindle down to zero after a year or so of absence-little beyond a "How are you, old fellow?" "Glad to see you." "If you come into shire, mind you hunt me up." Or if the quondam intimate be met with in town, the general invitation is couched in the same vague terms the name of the street he happens to dwell in being substituted for the county. They manage matters with a kindlier feeling, and in a better spirit, in the West Indies.

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The hearts of the planters are as warm as the sun under which their complexions are tanned, and as open as their hospitable mansions. had not been four and twenty hours on the island ere I received as many invitations to pass three or four days at each of the estates which were situated between the town of Basseterre and the garrison. My kind friend, Mr. Wilson, having claimed priority, in virtue of the letter I had brought, took me, vi et armis, to his beautiful place, Green Hill; nor would he hear of my leaving him under a week. His neighbours having held a council of war, and "on hospitable thoughts intent," settled it amongst themselves that I should take them in rotation, en route to the garrison. First came Mr. E., then Mr. S., then Colonel T., then Mr. R.; in short, I could have gone through the alphabet twice over, had not garrison duties called me to Brimstone Hill.

I had heard much of West India living, and of the creature-comforts

there to be found; but no description can convey an adequate idea of the delicacies which grace an opulent planter's table. Of one thing I soon became convinced-we know nothing of turtle in this country, and the London bons vivans are likewise in a blessed state of ignorance as to the veritable goût of lime punch and old madeira. Would that the corporation of the city would meet in council, and the Lord Mayor would send out one of the most approved of gourmands, in the shape of a discriminat ing alderman, and he would then be let into the secret, which he could divulge, on his return from the gastronomic pilgrimage, for the benefit of his fellow-citizens. The soup we partake of at the mansion-house, and at the various feasts given by the several civic companies, is a good soup-a rich and palatable soup per se; but then it is not turtle soup. Two-thirds of the luscious compound consists of stock extracted from the hind legs of beeves and calves, to which are superadded a few tit-bits from the amphibious animal who stands god-father to the contents of the tureen. Turtle soup, as concocted by an Ethiopian chef in the Antilles, is turtle soup. A West Indian cook goes the entire animal, and most laudably holds in abomination the admission of beef or veal into his scientific productions. It is no uncommon occurrence to slaughter threc turtle for a large party. An old hen turtle, of five or six hundred weight, for the calipash or stew, as well as for the eggs; one of eighty or a hundred, for the soup and fins; and a chicken turtle for steaks.

And then the glorious appendix of punch! and such punch! The fragrant lime, the juicy pine, the luscious guava jelly, and clarified syrup, to say nothing of the aromatic rum, some quarter of a century old, all of which, when judiciously admixed by a gnostic brewer, may well vic with that much-vaunted beverage termed "nectar," which we have been taught to believe is remarkably pleasant tipple. To drink madeira in perfection, a man must go to the West Indies. It is a generally received opinion in this country that the East India madeira-that, for instance, termed "London Particular "—is the finest wine. This is an error, and one easily accounted for. In the first place, the wine shipped to the East Indies on the account of merchants or captains of Indiamen, is, for the most part, of second growth, and a thin acid potation. Its price varies from thirty-five to forty pounds the pipe; hereas the generous stuff sent to the West Indies stands the purchaser in from fifty to sixty pounds. The West India planters are proverbial for being good judges of wine; and as the run from Madeira to any one of the Leeward Islands seldom exceeds three or four weeks, if a pipe of questionable or indifferent stuff is shipped to them, it is invariably returned. The connoisseurs in this delicious wine are also aware that the Madeira sent to the West Indies is of a fuller body, and richer in quality than that forwarded to the East India market. I do not go the length of asserting that firstclass wines are never sent to the East Indies. Doubtless, they are in small quantities, to some of the dons who know good wine from bad. London wine-merchant may cry up such and such a binn of East India madeira, as having gone so many voyages, &c.; but if the wine were not originally of good body and rich flavour, all the voyages from the days of Anson or Cook, down to the present time, will never impart to it the mellowness and nutty bouquet that the Creole so justly prizes. The truth is, our climate is not suited to this generous juice. In proof of which assertion, I can state, that on my return home, after a five years'

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seasoning at St. Kitt's, some two or three of my friends, the planters, sent me on board for my sea stock a few dozens of their choicest wine; but each day, as we approached the colder latitudes, the flavour and bouquet vanished by degrees, and by the time the remaining bottles of the precious stuff were landed at the custom-house, the dor ors could not have recognized their gifts. Therefore, I repeat, if you wish to know what really good Madeira is, go the the West Indies.

The style of living in the Leeward islands is essentially different from the pomp and display which characterize dinner-giving in the eastern hemisphere. Hospitality, good fellowship, and a hearty welcome, greet the visitor in every one of these insular paradises; while ostentation, a freezing formality, with a vast deal of pretension, impose a restraint on the guest, that all the luxury and splendour cannot compensate for.

The great charm of society, suivant moi, and the art of making every convive quite at home, is the total absence of ceremony. The invited once beneath the roof of a West India planter, feels as much at his ease as amongst his own penates. This is true politeness and good breeding-it proceeds from the heart; and it is to this instinctive and innate feeling that the enjoyment of "Life in the West Indies" is to be attributed. The servants, too, taking example from their masters, are assiduous, civil, and attentive. They administer to your wants, even to the minutest trifle, with a zeal and good humour that is gratifying in the

extreme.

A really good negro servant is invaluable; they are, one and all, obliging, and perform whatever is required of them with an alacrity and apparent good-will, that should call for kind treatment in return. They have failings, it is true; but if they do run out of the course occasionally, they scrupulously perform the work required of, and expected from, them. Their besetting sin is a love of show and dress-to gratify which, they will not scruple to wear their master's clothes. Several instances of this kind occurred during the time I was stationed at St. Christopher's. I will give a diverting case in point. Shortly after I had been installed in my quarters, on Brimstone Hill, Mr. Dawson, a lieutenant of artillery, came down from Barbadoes, in command of his detachment. His quarters requiring some repairs, I gave him up a couple of rooms beneath my own roof. He was but slowly recovering from a slight fever, which had attacked him a day or two after his landing from England. For a week or ten days he was confined to his room, and on a certain evening, after seeing him to bed, and made up for the night, I went to dine with a Doctor Rawlins, who lived at Sandy Point, about two miles from the garrison. I was returning home on horseback, between twelve and one o'clock, and riding through an estate, at the foot of Brimstone Hill, belonging to a cousin of his, when I heard the sound of music, dancing, and singing, in the negro huts. I pulled up, and walking my horse quietly through the pathway, approached the dwelling from whence the sounds of revelry proceeded. To my utter amazement I beheld, on peeping through a crevice in the window, a full-dress uniform of the Royal Artillery, and a cocked hat and feather to match, bobbing up and down with saltatory vigour to a barbarous country dance, scraped by a sable Paganini on a discordant violin, which was accompanied by some most sonorous thumpings on a "Tom-Tom." I was quite taken aback (as the sailors say) for the moment, for I had left my

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friend Dawson in bed, and unless he had been seized by delirium or brain fever, I could not possibly account for the uniform. To satisfy myself on this point, therefore, I dismounted, and having tied my horse to a neighbouring tree, opened the door of the hut, where a sight met my astonished gaze I shall not readily forget. The reader may form some idea of my feelings when I state that one of Stultz's full-dress embroidered coats covered the person of Mr. Dawson's black servant. Not even the rage I was in at the moment could prevent my laughing-in the first place, at the impudence of the vagabond; and in the second, at the ludicrous figure he cut. It appears that the aspiring mulatto youth had helped himself to a light brown, or rather sandy-coloured scratch wig, appertaining to Major Edgeworth, of the 35th Regiment. This, over his black, woolly head, presented a most comical appearance. On the top of the wig came the cocked hat and pendant plumes. The embroidered coat was closely buttoned up to the chin. (It was quite new, and had cost forty guineas). The white smalls, silk stockings, shoes, and buckles, he had done me the honour to abstract from my wardrobe. To seize the fellow by the collar was the work of a moment, and having sent to the overseer on the estate for a rope, I tied the gentleman's hands behind his back, and remounting, led him up the hill to the garrison. As a matter of course, I was challenged by the sentry, and I lost no time in confining my friend to the safe custody of the sergeant of the guard. The men on duty, in spite of my presence, could not help laughing at the faree-like figure of the dandy Jumbo as he was led off to durance vile-there to mourn over the premature loss of his borrowed plumes, and consider the probable charge per hour at which he might be rated for their use.

I am half afraid that we did not go into the items" in anything of that mild forbearing spirit of Baron Nathan and Co., or that Mr. Dawson entered at all into the feelings of the Melton man, who, tradition affirms, felt obliged to anybody for taking the shine out of his new coat.

BADGER HUNTING IN THE PAS-DE-CALAIS.
BY R. B*****

The old French town of St. Omer has something venerable and interesting about it to the eye of an Englishman. It is a clean, comfortable, and respectable-looking place, and for a couple of centuries has been a favourite locality for a certain species of education for some of our more wealthy and aristocratic catholic population, both in England and Ireland. The university of the town has some high scholastic honours to boast of, in reference not only to the men of France, but of our own land; and even now, though greatly reduced in academical impor tance and usefulness since the days of the first great revolution of 1790, the public system of tuition followed here is still respectable in its attainments and influential in its character.

But the dusty volumes of the college library-unquestionably one

of the very best in the north of France for certain kinds of books and ancient manuscripts-have no more the charm of satisfying the eravings for novelties of the entire population of this town; for they have of late years been strongly tempted to adopt English fashionable sports and pastimes. Races have for several seasons been regular; though I must add, from the little which has fallen under my own observation, these have been but regularly indifferent, both as to sport and the fairness and integrity by which they have been conducted.

Many English sportsmen know the Rue Royale and the Café Royal, kept for some years by Mr. Williams, and I believe very respectably kept. Many must also, of late years, have met there with the Messrs. Covie-two dashing French youths, full of ardour for all the manly and robust sports of England, full of money also, and, I may add, with no very churlish feelings in its distribution. In this rendezvous of British and French sportsmen, shooting, angling, hunting, and racing formed the general topies of conversation, and never-failing subjects of interest; and it was here that I had the pleasure of constituting one of a party who took a share in one of these rambling exploits of which I am just about to give a brief recital.

For a few weeks previously, intimations had been given at the Café Royal by several countrymen, that some badgers had taken up their abode in a part of the country between six and seven miles from St. Omer, and that there was a longing desire in the neighbourhood to have them completely routed out. It was not, however, for any real damage which these comparatively innocent animals had committed upon the chattels or property of any one; but the powerful reason with the French plebeians was, that they were the harbingers of certain spiritual agencies, and that the female portion of the inhabitants in the vicinity had been frightened from their propriety, and had for some time considered the residence of the poor badgers a nuisance which ought to be forthwith abated. A sporting council of war was held, over some strong coffee and gloria, at which the Messrs. Covie, Charles de Foullard, and the young Baron de Moncone were the leading members. It was resolved to have a day set apart for a regular attack upon these underground disturbers of the public peace and of the nightly dreams of the young maidens of the locality. The first Thursday of October was appointed for the exploit, and several English gentlemen resolved to form a part of the sporting cavalcade.

It is curious to remark how superstitious notions pass current in different countries, and what a striking resemblance there is among them, both as to the source from which they spring, and the various incidents and circumstances which accompany them. This connection of the badger with the nightly apparitions is not confined to France; it prevails in many districts of Great Britain, and I believe throughout nearly all the states of Germany. The cause may in some measure be accounted for on purely rational principles. The habits of the badger are just of that class which are calculated to inspire the unreflecting and uninformed mind with a morbid fear of supernatural agencies and movements. The animals are shy, retiring, secluded; they have a quiet, stealthy, unobtrusive mode of procuring their food; their precise habits and character are but little known, even to professed naturalists; and above all things, they seem to delight in those localities which the untutored mind of man