A curious phase of human nature is that same play-acting, effect-studying, temperament, which ends, if indulged in too much, in hopeless self-deception, and ‘the hypocrisy which,’ as Mr. Carlyle says, ‘is honestly indignant that you should think it hypocritical.’  It is common enough among Negresses, and among coloured people too:  but is it so very uncommon among whites?  Is it not the bane of too many Irish? of too many modern French? of certain English, for that matter, whom I have known, who probably had no drop of French or Irish blood in their veins?  But it is all the more baneful the higher the organisation is; because, the more brilliant the intellect, the more noble the instincts, the more able its victim is to say—­’See:  I feel what I ought, I say what I ought, I do what I ought:  and what more would you have?  Why do you Philistines persist in regarding me with distrust and ridicule?  What is this common honesty, and what is this “single eye,” which you suspect me of not possessing?’

Very beautiful was that harbour of George Town, seen by day.  In the centre an entrance some two hundred yards across:  on the right, a cliff of volcanic sand, interspersed with large boulders hurled from some volcano now silent, where black women, with baskets on their heads, were filling a barge with gravel.  On the left, rocks of hard lava, surmounted by a well-lined old fort, strong enough in the days of 32-pounders.  Beyond it, still on the left, the little city, scrambling up the hillside, with its red roofs and church spires, among coconut and bread-fruit trees, looking just like a German toy town.  In front, at the bottom of the harbour, villa over villa, garden over garden, up to the large and handsome Government House, one of the most delectable spots of all this delectable land; and piled above it, green hill upon green hill, which, the eye soon discovers, are the Sommas of old craters, one inside the other towards the central peak of Mount Maitland, 1700 feet high.  On the right bow, low sharp cliff-points of volcanic ash; and on the right again, a circular lake a quarter of a mile across and 40 feet in depth, with a coral reef, almost awash, stretching from it to the ash-cliff on the south side of the harbour mouth.  A glance shows that this is none other than an old crater, like that inside English Harbour in Antigua, probably that which has hurled out the boulders and the ash; and one whose temper is still uncertain, and to be watched anxiously in earthquake times.  The Etang du Vieux Bourg is its name; for, so tradition tells, in the beginning of the seventeenth century the old French town stood where the white coral-reef gleams under water; in fact, upon the northern lip of the crater.  One day, however, the Enceladus below turned over in his sleep, and the whole town was swallowed up, or washed away.  The sole survivor was a certain blacksmith, who thereupon was made—­or as sole survivor made himself—­Governor