Their daughters are carefully instructed in all the various modes of setting forth their own charms, and of publishing their own exalted rank, by expressing their contempt for all beneath them. The scornful toss of the head, the disdainful curve of the upper-lip, the affected heave of the shoulders, the insolent stare, and the air of proud condescension, is studied with far more intenseness than their grammars or geographies. Meet them where you will, in the place of worship or the “public show,” their manners are equally haughty; and their boasted pretension to superiority is even expressed in the very bending of their knees, when in acts of supposed adoration. The more juvenile part of the community are, of course, debarred by their youth from keeping up with proper dignity their rank in life; but in the very nursery, the lessons of pride and affectation are engrafted, soon to become strong and flourishing shoots. The days of extreme ignorance are certainly passed; the days when the young white Creole was left entirely to the care of their black, or low-coloured nurses, who imagined they could not better discharge their duty than by giving them their own way. The days when girls of fourteen could find no other amusement than, seated upon the floor, amid their negro attendants, to pass their time in eating “sling,” or sucking sugar-canes, while their listless mothers lay stretched upon their couch, leaving their children to learn their alphabet as best they could. In later years, as before remarked, a poor English girl is generally procured to instruct them in the early branches of knowledge, curl their hair, and teach them their “steps,” until the period arrives when their parents deem it necessary to send them to England, and place them at some suburban seminary. Here they are taught to sketch a landscape, complete a butterfly in Poonah painting, play some of the fashionable airs, with variations, upon a piano, speak Anglicised French, dance a quadrille, and perhaps embroider a footstool. Their education is then supposed to be completed, and they are re-shipped to the West Indies, to astonish “papa and mamma,” play their part upon the theatre of life, and swell the ranks of the female _coterie_. In the days when the militia was in being in Antigua, the ladies of these self-elected aristocrats, were very fond of alluding to the martial rank of their relatives, particularly in their visits to England—talking of “my husband, the colonel,” “Capt. X———, my papa,” or “Lieut. Z———, my brother.” The gentlemen, many of them, were also very proud of wearing their uniform upon “field-day,” which occurred once a month, and no doubt felt themselves, as they buckled on their glittering swords, like “Hudibras, grow valorous.” The governor, as commander of the force, was allowed by the militia laws an honorary staff, which consisted of six officers, who bore the local rank of lieutenant-colonels.