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ranged, ladies & gentlemen side by side & I regretted only that my wife, & her aunt & cousin were not with me to enjoy the fun. The sands were flat & firm & soft to the feet, & above them is a fine paved promenade. We attended English service at the Protestant chapel where the minister called the Queen our Governess & in the middle of his sermon while wiping the perspiration from his forehead called out to the clerk “ I say, go & open that door.” - The clerk was a dapper young man & between prayers & sermon took a velvet bag shaped like a billiard bag & fixed at the end of a long stick, wherewith to collect the contributions of the congregation. This forms, I apprehend his stipend, a complete specimen of the voluntary system & although the congregation was tolerably numerous yet I should fear that after paying rent, clerk, organist, singers (one beautiful female voice there was) little enough would be left for the minister. A highly respectable congregation was there, the consul among them.

The gaiety & apparent cleanliness of the lower orders is very striking. We saw no one that was not tidily, I may almost say prettily dressed. The women & children all wear caps & no bonnets, gay shawls or kerchiefs invariably, & a nattiness of style in arraying whatever they may wear is very distinguishable. We visited the cathedral, where is a good carved pulpit, walked among the ramparts & fortifications which are considerable & on the levee promenade where there were no end of gay & pretty girls & men whose clothes fitted as marvellously bad as their spouses & daughters do the contrary. Everywhere out of England is this the case.

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