the black population, slave and free, during the ten years ending 1856, the deaths were only 1 in 43.6; for the eighteen previous years, it was about the same; and if the mulattoes could be taken from this calculation and the black population of the whole State taken, the report would, no doubt, be much more favorable, since negroes, as the Doctor remarks, suffer less from consumption in the country than in the towns. North of about 40° north latitude, says Dr. Nott, the negro steadily deteriorates, and becomes exterminated. The statistics of New-York, New-England, and Philadelphia, abundantly prove this. But, besides his own laziness and vice, and an uncongenial climate, the negro has another enemy in the North, quite as powerful as those mentioned, viz.: the influx of Irish labor, which generally invatles the same fields of occupation that are preferred by the negro. Both of these races are fond of the large towns, and the majority of them being fit only for unskilled labor, are brought into immediate competition, and the result of a rivalry between the hardy, industrious Celt, and the indolent Ethiopian, cannot for a moment be doubtful. The German immigration also interferes somewhat with his interests, but only slightly, owing to their agricultural tastes, which carry them to the vast fields of the far west, where they are more anxious to secure small, but independent homesteads, by years of steady industry and thrift, than to follow the menial occupations of the cities. The negro in the Northern States is directly upon the path of this immense wave of immigration, and is in danger of being completely overwhelmed by it.* Observant travellers are now beginning very generally to remark, how rapidly the Irish are supplanting the negroes. In all the hotels, whether North or South, the waiters, as well as the female servants, are commonly Irish; and in all the hardest out-door work, this race is also superseding the blacks. In several States, Sir Charles Lyell heard of strikes, where the white workmen bound themselves not to return to their employment until the master had discharged all his colored people. Professor Johnston also observed this competition between the two races, and even in some cases between the more skilful blacks (few in number) and native craftsmen. He says: The Irish emigrants are their chief competitors for the humble, unskilled employments they were accustomed to follow. By obtaining such labor, the Irish are enabled to indulge in their gregarious habits, to linger about large towns, to unite, to act in masses, and so to obtain for their party a sensible influence both of a physical and political kind. But native-born craftsmen are combined against the more skilful of the free colored people, and at the period of The average number of arrivals in the United States during the years 1849 to 1835 irclusive, was about one thousand daily! The only years in which the German has equalled the Irish immigration were in 1846, 1854, and 1855. The largest number of arrivals in any one year, was in 1854. when over 427,000 immigrants landed in the United States! Of this number 87,000 were farmers; 82,000 common laborers, an1 31,000 mechanics.-History of Emigration to the United States, by W. J. Bromwell. ↑ See Everest's United States, p. 97. Chambers' Things as they are in America, p. 271. Sir Charles Lyell's Second Visit, vol. ii., p. 160. Second Visit, vol. ii., p. 100. the riots, attacked not only them, but such as were accused of preferring to employ them. Since that time the pressure against them has been kept up, and continued immigration from Ireland has caused this pressure continually to become stronger. Redress for ill usage they find difficult to be obtained; so that by degrees they have been compelled in a great measure to give up their old occupations, and many of them to seek new homes farther towards the North and West." "Whenever the interests of the white man and the black come into collision in the United States, the black man goes to the wall. Such is the statement of those who, in America, profess to be the colored man's friend. It is certain that wherever labor is scarce, there he is steadily employed; when it becomes plentiful, he is the first to be discharged."* Under these circumstances, not only the present condition of the free blacks in the North is bad, but their future prospects are exceedingly gloomy; for the truth becomes every day more apparent that there, as well as in Canada and Nova Scotia, they are placed in an unnatural position, and that they cannot compete with Anglo-Saxon civilization in cold climates, without the protection of masters. We have now reviewed the condition of the free negroes in most parts of the globe, where they are settled in any large numbers, and find that they are pretty much the same everywhere. Captain Burton's description of the negroes of Zanzibar, cited by us, would answer almost equally well for any part of the earth. It is their inconsistencies of character that puzzle those who do not know them well; for they have good traits, but are absolutely without the power of selfcontrol, or to resist their almost strong passions; hence the man who, under a mild, but decided master, is kind, amiable, and affectionate, exciting even the love of those with whom he comes in contact, when left to himself becomes cruel, brutal, and abandoned. It is something as a boy, who under a kind, but firm and decided mother, is obedient, good and happy, if transferred to a weak, irresolute, and indulgent aunt, becomes cross, ill-natured, violent, and discontented, simply because he can have his own way. Let it not be said that we are endeavoring to blacken the character of the negroes. As well say that the physician who probes a wound in order to be able to heal it more easily, is endeavoring to make his patient's case worse; as well reproach the honest accountant who shows his employer, by figures and careful statements, that he is pursuing a course leading to certain insolvency. To remedy any evil we must know its extent, otherwise our efforts will not be commensurate with the work to be performed. We must turn iconoclasts before we can quit idolatry, and so long as three-fourths of the civilized world have the negro fixed in their imaginations, as a saintly individual awaiting only liberty, as a prelude to perfect canonization, so long will all efforts to benefit this race prove fruitless, and we shall leave him as we found him, a barbarian, or destroy him by philanthropical quackery. *Notes on North America, By James F. W. Johnston, F. R. S.. LL. D., &c., pagę 314, 315 ART. IX.-THE OLD AFRICAN AND HIS PRAYER FROM A COLLEGE PORTFOLIO. "Condemn me not, cold critic!--but indulge Why not indulge such thoughts as swell our hearts With fuller admiration of that power Which gives our hearts with such high thoughts to swell?" I had little thought of religion; were there not beautiful things enough in this world without it? Where were the flowers and the fountains, the sunbeams and the summer clouds? All these were beautiful enough, and I was wedded here to a world which had fond attractions for its votaries, its pleasure and its pomp, its fame and its glory; a world with its brilliant illusions, its fascinations, its bright and glowing things, its dreams and its hopes-the dreams and the hopes of this gay world. Time has passed. I had little thought of religion then, and have had little since. Sorrow has at times reached me anguish, but it has been the world's sorrow and the world's anguish-the revenues of indulgence and sin. But yet Time, with the things that have faded and perished with it, has not touched a memory of the night when first I felt, in the bitterness which such knowledge brings, how valueless is mere human philosophy, and how dwindle into insignificance what, are called the "Consolations of Philosophy," when contrasted with those sub. lime consolations which a willing heart can receive, when, bruised and bleeding, it looks up to heaven, and receives its fiat of "peace.” Talk of peace, philosophers; talk of it, Zeno and Seneca; talk of it, stoics, and cynics; talk of it, ye who dwell in the gardens and the groves, the Cynosargum, the Porch, and the Academy. Even I have talked of it, as I dreamed, in other days, of your aphorisms and your lofty morality. A humble proselyte-the first fires of my youth's enthusiasm were lit up from your lamps, and from whence the inexhaustible streams and fountains flowed to your bosoms, would I, too, have drunk. Alas! have you been able to point to that which may still the whirlwind of the passions, may check the torrents that devastate the soul, and break up the crushing weight of earth that at times pressee on it? Is it yours to unfetter and to free it, to pierce with it the veil of dissolution and death, and bid it "peace, be still' ? There are touching scenes in the byways, as in the highways of this world; scenes that fertilize the heart, and hold it up all lovely in its native freshness, and in despite of the dross which gathers about it; scenes that banish, for the time, the PHILOSOPHER, and develop the MAN; that dethrone from his tyrant tripod, Infidelity, and substitute fair flowers in the pathway of gloom. A transitory moment, perhaps, and Darkness regains her empire, Pride seizes upon the reins of her stern dominion, and the MAN feels again that he is a PHILOSOPHER An old man-an African-one who had felt this world, but not as the favored children of light feel it-felt it in its affliction. We remember him well. A worshipper in the land of his fathers, he had seen "God in the cloud," and "heard him in the storm." A worshipper-when the day revived, and the sunbeams blushed upon the dawn, he bowed to the day God at his first approach, and bowed to him as he disappeared behind the western hills. To the day and to the night, and to the stars of the night, bowed in mute adoration this old African idolater. The soul's yearning after the ill-defined, the ill-understood something, which this world cannot give, had been his in the land of his fathers, and recollection of that land and of its religion did not leave him in long years of absence. Ever the invisible and mysterious agency worked within and struggled for development. Desolation within, and desolation without, where were the gods of his fathers? The African was yet the African! The first gleams of day that tinged the mountain heights, stirred up his unwithered heart, and with anxious eye he awaited the moment when that heart's incense should be poured out as of old. The morning's sun found the simple child of Error and Darkness prostrate upon the earth, in the mute adoration of a soul which felt that there was a Divinity, and rejoiced to have found it. Nature's Idolater! Is there hope for you? Is there peace for you, and from such a source? Years had passed on, and the African grew old; sickness and disease, the want of opportunity at times, and at times the perverseness of his nature, prevented him from attendance upon the worship of the "living and the true God," in the land of his exile. Yet had he heard of this God. A vague and dreamy idea of him flitted through the recesses of his benighted mind. Ill-digested as it was crude, there was still something in the mazes of his mind, he scarcely knew what, though the old man could not but feel how incomparably superior even this "dawning thing" was to the very perfections of the God, and the religion that had followed him from the land of his fathers. The old African looked out from his cabin now, upon the sun, as it gilded the morn, but bowed not. His eye fixed upon its setting splendors-still erect. The sun, and the moon, and the stars -he saw them all, but prostrate no more-for nature's idolater had forgotten his idolatry. I saw this old African at his master's. Something had deeply touched the veteran. There was a heart there to feel-there was nature there to be grieved. Old, deformed, wretched to look upon, as he was, little of instruction could the sons of pomp and pleasure have expected to realize from an Ethiopian Lazarus. (Sons of pomp and pleasure, sons of science and philosophy, know ye that the night season better shows the diamond than the day. Know ye that the effulgence of the gem does not always shine from the gilded coronet. In the mire of misery-in the foul earth of desolation and woe-the gem glitters, and glitters in ineffable glory!) His heart was touched; what had touched that old heart? DEATH! deeply death touches the heart-he flings his hurried hand across its lyre-brings from its recesses wild strains of discord, harsh and grating. He sweeps, and sweeps on, but no melody breathes from the living lyre. The lyre breaks, and the cords snap, perhaps. Strange, deep searcher of the monarch's and the plowman's soul-death! Pallida Mors, ego pede, pulsat, etc. The friends of his early days had left him-gone! where were they? In the abodes of him to whom, in his native land, the monarch had sent frequent messengers. In the abodes of bliss-in the abodes of woe, of which he had heard the white man talk? The African mused upon his friends that had gone, and his heart beat strangely then. Beat on-beat on-old heart; even the discord of such sorrow is better, far better, than the harmony and the melody of strains that float in liquid undulations over licentiousness and passion! These emotions were too much, and he sought his master. He would hear about the God and the religion that floated in his fancy, and he would have some mode provided for conveying him, too decrepid to walk, to the neighboring church. His language, though rude, had a power in it for me, careless, thoughtless, skeptical about religious matters as I was then and have been since. His words, scarce intelligibly pronounced, simple, expressive, deeply expressive, reached the sensorium of feeling, and worked strange disorder there. "Abelard gone, Mingo gone, Quomina gone—me, Massa, ah, me, me!” There was a tumult; and in that broken me, Massa, ah, me!" spoke a principle of universal humanity-a principle as true to itself now, as it was at the deluge-that speaks alike in the Alexanders and Cæsars, the Platos and Bacons, and the old African negroes of this world, indicating some common sparks, some emanations from the same powerful, invisible, and eternal, original. of man. The fraternity There was a The old man impulse was Why should I say that I felt "I, too, am a man !" tumult in my bosom that I dreamed not of before. had gone, and I followed, followed, for an irresistible driving me on. Night had shed darkness upon nature, and here and there a star glimmered through the darkness. Alone, in the open plain, was the old man's weather worn cot, and through its seams streamed the blaze that played upon the solitary hearth. would seek the old man there. I would know more of him, learn how much of humanity yet lingered in one of humanity's least favored children. I In the narrow path which led to the African's door, I stumbled. In the stillness and darkness of the hour, with a tempest within me, I stumbled upon an object. Stretched upon the earth in prayer, was this old idolater! Desolation in search of hope. Religion, pure and undefiled religion, breaking in upon the darkness of ignorance and despair! Before his God, bowed to the earth, could there anything enter that African's bosom to chase away its affliction? Was there hope for him, love for him, heaven for him, consolation for him? Consolation I had sought in vain in every giddy path. Old man, benighted heathen of another day, has God blessed you and smiled upon you? Idolater that was, barbarian, child of ignorance, and superstition, and |