sertions, we save
time by allowing him all the benefit he can derive from whatever weight
they might carry.

"Generation has followed generation, and the children are as like their
fathers as the successive generations of apes."

To this we can have nothing to object; especially in view of what the
writer goes on to say, and that on his own side of the hedge--somewhat
qualified though his admission may be:--"The whites, it is likely
enough, succeeded one another with the same similarity for a series of
ages." Our speculator grows profoundly philosophic here; and in this
mood thus entertains his readers in a strain which, though deep, we
shall strive to find clear:--

"It is now supposed that human race has been on the planet for a
hundred thousand years at least; and the first traces of civilization
cannot be thrown back at furthest beyond six thousand. During all this
time mankind went on treading in the same steps, century after century
making no more advance than the birds and beasts."

[131] In all this there is nothing that can usefully be taken exception
to; for speculation and conjecture, if plausible and attractive, are
free to revel whenever written documents and the unmistakable
indications of the earth's crust are both entirely at fault. Warming
up with his theme, Mr. Froude gets somewhat ambiguous in the very next
sentence. Says he:--

"In Egypt or India or one knows not where, accident or natural
development quickened into life our moral and intellectual faculties;
and these faculties have grown into what we now experience, not in the
freedom in which the modern takes delight, but under the sharp rule of
the strong over the weak, of the wise over the unwise."

Our author, as we see, begins his above quoted deliverance quite at a
loss with regard to the agency to which the incipience, growth, and
fructification of man's faculties should be attributed. "Accident,"
"natural development," he suggests, quickened the human faculties into
the progressive achievements which they have accomplished. But then,
wherefore is this writer so forcible, so confident in his prophecies
regarding Negroes and their future temporal condition [132] and
proceedings, since it is "accident," and "accident" only, that must
determine their fulfilment? Has he so securely bound the fickle
divinity to his service as to be certain of its agency in the
realization of his forecasts? And if so, where then would be the
fortuit