to be maintained for the sake of the best
development of the race, and for the continuance of that mutual reaction
and play of peculiar forces between races which promise the highest
development for the whole. It is not for nothing, we may suppose, that
differentiation has gone on in the world; and we doubt that either
benevolence or self-interest requires this age to attempt to restore an
assumed lost uniformity, and fuse the race traits in a tiresome
homogeneity.

Life consists in an exchange of relations, and the more varied the
relations interchanged the higher the life. We want not only different
races, but different civilizations in different parts of the globe.

A much more philosophical view of the African problem and the proper
destiny of the negro race than that of Canon Rawlinson is given by a
recent colored writer,--["Africa and the Africans." By Edmund W. Blyden.
Eraser's Magazine, August, 1878.]--an official in the government of
Liberia. We are mistaken, says this excellent observer, in regarding
Africa as a land of a homogeneous population, and in confounding the
tribes in a promiscuous manner. There are negroes and negroes. "The
numerous tribes inhabiting the vast continent of Africa can no more be
regarded as in every respect equal than the numerous peoples of Asia or
Europe can be so regarded;" and we are not to expect the civilization of
Africa to be under one government, but in a great variety of States,
developed according to tribal and race affinities. A still greater
mistake is this:

"The mistake which Europeans often make in considering questions of negro
improvement and the future of Africa is in supposing that the negro is
the European in embryo, in the undeveloped stage, and that when,
by-and-by, he shall enjoy the advantages of civilization and culture, he
will become like the European; in other words, that the negro is on the
same line of progress, in the same groove, with the European, but
infinitely in the rear . . . . This view proceeds upon the assumption
that the two races are called to the same work, and are alike in
potentiality and ultimate development, the negro only needing the element
of time, under certain circumstances, to become European. But to our mind
it is not a question between the two races of inferiority or superiority.
There is no absolute or essential superiority on the one side, or
absolute or essential inferiority on the other side. It is a question of
differenc