Other Asiatic nations might seem to call for observation; but so little is known of their mental characteristics, that it would be improper to endeavour to substantiate our cause by them.
It is unnecessary to do more than remind the reader of the low development of the Negro mind and his miserable nasal conformation—they are worthy of each other. However humane may be the attempts to elevate the Negro, it can never be done till his Nose is more elongated; but as its present form has subsisted without alteration for three or four thousand years, there does not seem much hope of its being improved now. The Negro race, as old as the earliest Egyptian sculptures, has never risen to an equality with any of the other races; and, though we would not willingly condemn any nation to hopeless degradation, yet the history of the Past _will_ reveal somewhat of the secrets of the Future, and he is a fool who cannot, and a coward who dare not, read them.
As among individuals, so among nations there are orders and degrees of mind, and it is only the blind who cannot see that the equality of the one is as wild a dream as the equality of the other.
No well-informed writer, however warm his sympathies towards the Negro race as his relation by the same “blood of which God made all the dwellers upon earth,” has anticipated a destiny for it equal to that of the Caucasian or elliptical-headed and aquiline-nosed races. Channing, the most enthusiastic friend of the blacks, in all the fervour of his ardent mind and vivid imagination, attributes to them a capacity only for the milder graces of Christianity, and accords to them a destiny precisely such as is indicated by their nasal formation when elevated and sanctified by religion. “I should expect,” he says, “from the African race, if civilized, less energy, less courage, less intellectual originality, than in ours; but more amiableness, tranquillity, gentleness, and content. They might not rise to an equality in outward condition, but would probably be a much happier race.” Essentially a feminine character is that which he assigns the negro; a character very loveable, notwithstanding the deformity of its facial indicator.
In the new Islands of the Pacific, we behold a constant succession of new worlds emerging from the deep by means of the same process which, in the pre-Adamite world, formed and elevated the islands and continents of the northern hemisphere. Minute polypi are secreting from the waters, and fixing on the summits of submarine volcanoes the solid and durable limestone which now forms their protection from the waves, and which will hereafter form the foundations on which accumulated detritus will heap up fertile soils and habitable lands.[53] Earthquakes are continually pushing up these horizontal surfaces, and breaking them up into mountains which, arresting the clouds in their progress, draw down into the valleys and plains the fertilizing rain. This smooths down the asperities of the earthquake-broken surface, and softens and harmonizes into that sweet variety which gives birth to