and the events of years.
Doctor Borrow, the botanist, is made to pass, by insensible changes,
from a learned indifference concerning slavery to eloquent and ardent
argument against it, and thus to present the history of the process by
which even science, the coldest element of our civilization, found
itself at last unconsciously arrayed against a system long abhorrent to
feeling. In the Doctor's talk with Westlake, we have a close and clear
comparison of the origin and result of the civilizations of New England
and the South, the high equality of the North and the mean aristocracy
of the Slave States, and the Doctor's first perfect consciousness of
loving the one and hating the other. The supposititious Mandingo's
observations of the state of Europe at the time of opening the African
slave-trade form a humorous protest against judgment of Africa by
travellers' stories, and suggest more than a doubt whether the first
men-stealers were better than their victims, and whether they conferred
the boon of a higher civilization upon negroes by enslaving them. But
the humor of the book, like its learning, is subordinated to the story,
which is imbued with a sentiment not wanting in warmth because so noble
and lofty. The friendship of Colvil and Dudley is less like the
friendship between two men, than the affectionate tenderness of two
women for each other; and the character of Dudley in its purity and
elevation is sometimes elusive. The personality of Colvil is also rather
shadowy; but the Doctor is human and tangible, and the other persons,
however slightly indicated, are all real, and bear palpable witness, in
their lives, to the influences of that system which, though cruel to the
oppressed, wrought a ruin yet more terrible in the oppressor.

FOOTNOTES:

[G] Of course we have no disposition to deny M. Renan's right to reduce
Christ and every other historic figure to the standard of the most
modern critical art. We merely mean to say that this is all M. Renan
does, and that the all is not much.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No.
105, July 1866, by Various

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***

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