Now it is well known that we live in an age of puffing, as well as steaming, and it may be imagined by some, that these caterers for intellectual sweets have fallen short of their promises. Not so, kind readers; take my word for it there are few better organized societies of the kind to be met with, or whose well-filled shelves bear a richer burden. Books to suit every taste (and every age I might say—for our friend “Peter Parley” displays there the hidden treasures of the “earth, the sea, and skies,” to the delight of the youthful reader,) may be found in this Library Society. Theological, metaphysical, biographical, historical, and lighter works, abound. Poetry is not excluded; our own sweet bards, from good old Chaucer, that “father of English poetry,” down to the soft strains of Mrs. Hemans, or L. E. L., rank among its selections.
Of modern works there are no end. There, the irresistible charms of that “Wizard of the North,” the late Sir Walter Scott, with his “Jenny Deans;” his high-minded “Flora McIvor;” his unfortunate “Bride of Lammermoor,” and all his other “gentle dames” and “lordly knights,” are displayed before the enraptured reader. There Marryat amuses with his naïveté, and those stirring incidents of a sailor’s life, he knows so well to picture. There, “Boz” carries you perforce from the hut to the castle, and makes you weep or laugh in each. There are Bulwer and Ainsworth, who draw their gentlemen-ruffians in such a guise as to lead one to admire even a housebreaker or highwayman; Cooper, who makes us long to lead the life of a backwood’s-man; James, with his darling peeps at “by-gone days;” the dear Miss Mitford and Mary Howitt, whose simple annals and sylvan scenes almost bring before us the lovely fields and sweet flowers of England; Mrs. Gore, with all her pageantries; Mrs. Trollope, with her playful but keen sarcasms; the Countess of Blessington, with her elegant diction and pure imagery, as lovely as her own sweet form; with many other authors of note, are equally at the command of the subscribers to this Antiguan bibliotheca.
This society has been established for many years, but it was not incorporated by an act of the legislature until 1839, during the government of Sir Wm. Colebrooke. The members are elected by ballot, and after subscribing for ten years, they become free of the library, retaining all the privileges without being called upon for payment.
The library is kept in the upper part of a large house, well adapted for the purpose, consisting as it does of two good sized apartments, with library tables, covered with respectable green cloth, and pamphlets of all sorts and sizes; the sides of the room are lined with bookcases. Altogether it is an admirable society, and I strenuously advise all inhabitants of Antigua, whose ideas are not absolutely tied down to “profit and loss,” to become members; they cannot spend their spare money more agreeably, nor while away their leisure to better purpose.
CHAPTER XXII.
Early rising and “Jamie Thomson”—Journey to English Harbour—Windmills and Don Quixote—Groups of negroes and their equipages—All Saints’ chapel of ease—The “Hamlet”—Village of Liberta—Grace Hill—Patterson’s and Prince William—English Harbour market—Streets and dwellings—Commissariat’s store and government tank—Dockyard—The superintendent—Stores and storehouses—Engineer’s workshop—Blacksmith’s shop and blowing machine—Limes and roses—Recollections of England—Lieutenant Peterson and Lord Camelford—His lordship’s pranks—The ordnance—Clarence House and Dows Hill—The Ridge and “Shirley heights”—Fort Charlotte and Fort Berkeley—Bats Cave—The Savannah and its tombs—Indian Creek—Return to town.
The church clock proclaimed the hour of five, as a gentle rap came at my chamber door. Awakened from a pleasant dream, I started from my couch, and heard with something like vexation, that it was time to dress, in order to prosecute our intended journey to English Harbour.
Beautiful as is the breath of “early morn,” still there is something very disagreeable in leaving your comfortable bed, and it may be, your gorgeous dreams, for the dull realities of life, and the necessary, but irksome duties of the toilet. I know I shall be cried down by all lovers of Nature for my unsentimental remarks. Thomson, enraptured with his subject “of early rising,” exclaims with all a poet’s fervour—
Falsely luxurious, will not man awake,
And, springing from the bed of sloth, enjoy
The cool, the fragrant, and the silent hour,
To meditation due and sacred song?
For is there aught in sleep can charm the wise?
To lie in dead oblivion, losing half
The fleeting moments of too short a life—
Total extinction of th’ enlighten’d soul!
Or else to feverish vanity alive,
Wilder’d, and tossing through distemper’d dreams,
Who would in such a gloomy state remain
Longer than nature craves—when every muse
And every blooming pleasure wait without,
To bless the wildly devious morning walk.”
Now, all this sounds very pretty—very romantic indeed; and we begin to fancy the poet amid some “bosky dell,” or upland lawn, his shoes liberally bedewed with those glittering gems, which “hang in every cowslip’s bell,” and his unpowdered locks streaming behind him in the morning gale. But stay, gentle reader! hast thou not heard that Thomson was himself a very sluggard, and loved his warm bed far better than any sylvan scene he could so well describe? And in truth, many and many a poet, even to “Joanna Bailey,” the morning rhymester, has been of the same mind. Then, why should I not tell the truth, and own my sloth—although at the same time, when once abroad, no one feels the nameless “melodies of morn” more than I do.