the British Isles have completely endorsed the above sentiments of my own, and therefore I do not think that any conscientious man will dispute them. It is an old and a true saying that variety is the spice of life, and the beauties of the different races of people appear to the greatest advantage where their separate traits of character most differ from one another. Music and song, indeed, are quite a distinguished feature in the colored race, and there again we have seen mighty changes wrought out through and by our freedom, and again I thank the goodness of the Lord for even such changes as these. And yet we are only at the beginning of our improvements, associated as we also are with the white race of the United States—one of the most talented and ingenious peoples that the world has ever seen! It is well for us in a way that we are so associated, because our progress in these past years, and at the present time, is all the greater on that account. And yet when we consider that it is only yesterday, as it were, that all our people were set free, that our unbroken progress is still going on along the whole line, and that our progress will continue to be more marked in the future as the years gone by, who can tell to what glorious heights of elevation our people shall attain, even within the next twenty or twenty-five years? Because in our own day and generation, all the arts and sciences seem to be coming to the front; learning, education and inventions are farther and farther advanced day by day, and every kind of improvement grows and flourishes like the green bay-tree. Progress indeed must be made; things will not go backwards, but must go forward, onward and upward. Such is the inevitable fate of the colored race. With so very much accomplished already; with fifty per cent. of our entire people throughout the whole Union who can read and write and work arithmetic, we may well wonder at the advancement still in store for our race, when education shall cover the whole land, as the waters cover the sea; when the remaining fifty per cent., who are still destitute of education, are brought into the fold, as it were, and an ignorant colored man or woman will be difficult to find in our nation.