solved by any such short and simple process; here on this continent, within the borders of these States, slavery has done its work, and just here freedom is to have her greatest and most glorious triumph. This American State has given some examples to history, it has given some demonstrations of the power of free institutions for the white, it is giving to-day its most memorable, and is it too much to hope that it will yet give to the world a more glorious, because more difficult, demonstration of the same power in the black race? What if it should remain, for it, after having completed its work for the one, it should crown it in the other, by lifting it from deepest slavery, and by self-sacrifice and toil make it a blessing to the world! So we believe it will yet be. The way is not clear now; the people do not see their work; but by-and-by it will of itself be before them, and they will address themselves to it, bringing every quickened power which marks them among the nations, and, under God, they will complete it.

How it shall be done we do not feel competent to intimate, and it was not the purpose of this paper to attempt to indicate. No man, perhaps, is sufficient for that. The Providence of God we believe will mark the path, and events will hurry us if we be ready to follow them in right line of the work.

There are some things, however, which may be said that may possibly cast some light upon the supposed difficulties of the matter of emancipation without colonization. These difficulties, we think, arise in many cases from a mistaken estimate of the negro character and capabilities.

It is not our design to enter upon the question of the inferiority of the race or the impossibility of its ever living on an equality with the white; while we are not ready to grant the first, certainly not to the extent to which it is pushed, we are disposed to believe the latter. It is doubtful, we are inclined to believe it impossible, that the two races can ever on this continent abide on terms of social equality. We are, too, inclined to believe that this country is not to be the ultimate home of the colored race. It will go out from it. We think that there is that in the character of the African race which makes this probable, perhaps certain. In the strange workings of Divine Providence this race has in a marvellous manner been brought to this land, and put under a tutelage for a great future, and that Africa, its home, may become the recipient of blessing, the foundation and preparation for which were made in this country.

The bondage of the Israelites in Egypt was not an accident, but a divinely ordered procedure, which had a striking bearing upon the character of the Jew and shaped his whole after history. It was a work of preparation, and it was not done in a short time, but took two or three centuries to be brought to perfection. American slavery, like this Egyptian bondage, will have its results on the future or Africa.

In saying this, of course no reader will suppose that there is in the thought a justification of slavery, any more than when speaking of the great benefits which flowed from the bondage in Egypt to the Jew, we justify the selling of Joseph, or the tyranny of Pharaoh. It is God's wonderful work to bring the greatest good out of the deepest evils; the Fall to issue in Redemption.

It is impossible to discuss the future of the black people in this country without immediately being brought into contact with the future of Africa. The one is closely connected with the other. The movements of Providence are synchronous. How wonderfully events are prepared in distant places, that they may be brought together at the appointed moment! The fact that at just the time when the great and absorbing questions which relate to this people in our own land are forcing themselves upon our attention, the continent of Africa is attracting more of interest in the way of discovery and travel than any other portion of the earth, has, we think, a meaning.

Geographical research has almost exhausted other lands, while here almost a continent, at least till within a few years, has remained unexplored. This has not been because no efforts have been made to break through the thick veil that has always hung over it. Travellers have been unceasing in their attempts to penetrate into the interior, and have failed, not from want of energy, but because of the insuperable difficulties in the way. If they have succeeded in reaching the shores, they died under the fatal coast fever. If they have escaped this death, and pressed towards the interior, it has been only to fall victims to savage beasts or more savage men. So that African exploration has been, until perhaps within the last fifteen years, a history of melancholy disaster and sacrifice of valuable life.

Of late, new and marked success has crowned the efforts made to lay open this continent to the knowledge of the world.

What has been accomplished will strike with surprise any one whose attention has not before been called to the facts of the case. Let the reader take a well prepared map of to-day and compare it with that from which he studied his lessons a score of years ago. He will remember how simple and easy to be remembered was the information to be conveyed by that wide and lightly-colored track which bore the words, "Unexplored Regions ." It embraced the largest portion of the whole continent. But this has been encroached upon year after year, on the South by Livingstone and Cumming, on the North by Barth, on the East by Barton, and on the West by Wilson and Du Chaillu, until the discoveries have almost touched each other. Wide stretches of thousands of miles, given up hitherto in the thoughts of men to perpetual desolation and drought, have been shown to hold vast inland seas, deep navigable rivers, and to be teeming with animal life, populous with men and faithful of all the products of tropical luxuriance. So Africa begins to be known; by-and-by it will be opened up, made ready, we think, to link its history with a people on the other side of the ocean.

Leaving the point as proved, that the blacks are to remain, at least for an indefinite period in this country, (we do not say that it will be forever, but of this we shall speak in another place,) we naturally ask whether there is anything in the African character that is possible of future progress and elevation. We answer unhesitatingly, there are natural characteristics which will in a very marked and peculiar way be a means of their speedier rise.

It has been the misfortune, if so we may call it, of the African continent and the African people, to present their worst and most repulsive aspects first. This is the case with the country. The coast to which the voyager comes, for the most part lies low, and everywhere in its teeming bottoms disease and death are lurking. If he escapes the one he never avoids the other. The "African Fever" on the West coast is the certain welcome of the new comer, the only question is whether he will survive it. The incidental mention which the missionary traveller, Livingstone, makes of his thirty-seventh attack of fever, and Du Chaillu of his fiftieth, and the exhaustion of the last of fourteen ounces of quinine which he had taken on his journey, are ominous of the inhospitable reception which the country gives. But as soon as the traveller passes inland he comes into an entirely different region. Towering mountains, snow-capped and forest-crowned rise before him, and down through their passes healthful and bracing winds are winds are blowing, wide champaigns already full of uncultivated fruitfulness, or grass and bush-covered tracts, which nature seems to exult in filling with animal life, in its most beautiful, as well as gigantic and ferocious forms, everywhere appear. While at first it would seem as if here were a continent capable of doing little or nothing for the world, fit only