Law of Liberty, and a Gospel, because it is loved, and obeyed for its own sake; but even he who has attained to that must be reminded again and again, alas! that the Law which he loves does not depend for its sanction on his love of it, on his passing frames or feelings; but is as awfully independent of him as it is of the veriest heathen.  And that lesson the Sabbath does teach as few or no other institutions can.  The man who says, and says rightly, that to the Christian all days ought to be Sabbaths, may be answered, and answered rightly, ’All the more reason for keeping one day which shall be a Sabbath, whether you are in a sabbatical mood or not.  All the more reason for keeping one day holy, as a pattern of what all days should be.’  So we will be glad if the Negro has got thus far, as an earnest that he may some day get farther still.

That night, however, he kept no Sabbath, and we got no sleep; and were glad enough, before sunrise, to escape once more to the cove we had visited the evening before; not that it was prettier or more curious than others, but simply because it is better, for those who wish to learn accurately, to see one thing twice than many things once.  A lesson is never learnt till it is learnt over many times, and a spot is best understood by staying in it and mastering it.  In natural history the old scholar’s saw of ‘Cave hominem unius libri’ may be paraphrased by ’He is a thoroughly good naturalist who knows one parish thoroughly.’

So back to our little beach we went, and walked it all over again, finding, of course, many things which had escaped us the night before.  We saw our first Melocactus, and our first night-blowing Cereus creeping over the rocks.  We found our first tropic orchid, with white, lilac, and purple flowers on a stalk three feet high.  We saw our first wild pines (Tillandsias, etc.) clinging parasitic on the boughs of strange trees, or nestling among the angular limb-like shoots of the columnar Cereus.  We learnt to distinguish the poisonous Manchineel; and were thankful, in serious earnest, that we had happily plucked none the night before, when we were snatching at every new leaf; for its milky juice, by mere dropping on the skin, burns like the poisoned tunic of Nessus, and will even, when the head is injured by it, cause blindness and death.  We gathered a nosegay of the loveliest flowers, under a burning sun, within ten days of Christmas; and then wandered off the shore up a little path in the red lava, toward a farm where we expected to see fresh curiosities, and not in vain.  On one side of the path a hedge of Pinguin (Bromelia)—­the plants like huge pine-apple plants without the fruit—­was but three feet high, but from its prickles utterly impenetrable to man or beast; and inside the hedge, a tree like a straggling pear, with huge green calabashes growing out of its bark--here was actually Crescentia Cujete—­the plaything of one’s childhood—­alive