To the unquestionable capacity of the African must be added simplicity, amenity, good-nature, generosity, fidelity. Mahometans, who know him well, recognize his superior fidelity. And such also is the report of travellers not besotted by Slavery, from Mungo Park to Livingstone, who testify also to tenderness for parents, respect for the aged, hospitality, and patriarchal virtues reviving the traditions of primitive life. “Strike me, but do not curse my mother,” said an African slave to his master.[177] And Leo Africanus, the early traveller, describes a chief at Timbuctoo, “very black in complexion, but most fair in mind and disposition.”[178] Others dwell on his Christian character, and especially his susceptibility to those influences which are peculiarly Christian,--so that Saint Bernard could say of him, “_Felix Nigredo, quæ mentis candorem parit_.”[179] Of all people he is the mildest and most sympathetic. Hate is a plant of difficult growth in his bosom. How often has he returned the harshness of his master with care and protection! The African, more than the European, is formed by Nature for the Christian graces. It is easy to picture another age, when the virtues which ennoble the African will return to bless the people who now discredit him, and Christianity will receive a new development. In the Providence of God the more precocious and harder nature of the North is called to make the first advance. Civilization begins through knowledge. An active intelligence performs the part of opening the way. But it may be according to the same Providence, that the gentler people, elevated in knowledge, will teach their teachers what knowledge alone cannot impart, and the African shall more than repay all that he receives. The pioneer intelligence of Europe going to blend with the gentleness of Africa will be a blessed sight, but not more blessed than the gentleness of Africa returning to blend with that same intelligence at home. Under such combined influences men will not only know and do, but they will feel also; so that knowledge in all its departments, and life in all its activities, will have the triumphant inspiration of Human Brotherhood. * * * * * In this work there is no room for prejudice, timidity, or despair. Reason, courage, and hope are our allies, while the bountiful agencies of Civilization open the way. Time and space, ancient tyrants keeping people apart, are now overcome. There is nothing of aspiration for Universal Man which is not within the reach of well-directed effort,--no matter in what unknown recess of continent, no matter on what distant island of the sea. Wherever Man exists, there are the capacities of manhood, with that greatest of all, the capacity for improvement; and the civilization we have reached supplies the means.