If we cast our eyes upon the natives of the west and north, the Vai and other tribes of the Mandingo race, it is a different grade of comparison which offers itself to us, but always to the disadvantage of the Liberians. These natives, half islamized, have, much more than the Liberians, the sentiment of human dignity, and their costume, fitted to the climate and the race, far from rendering them ridiculous, as the European does the Liberians, is not devoid of a certain æsthetic character. They have, the Vai and the Manienka, above all, a superior intelligence of commercial affairs. The Vai have even a self-civilization which makes this little tribe one of the most interesting peoples of Africa; alone, of all the negroes known, they possess an alphabet suited to the writing of their language, and this alphabet, which they have completely invented themselves, has no relationship with any other known alphabet. A Vai native named Momolu Massaquoi has just established at Ghendimah, not far from the Anglo-Liberian boundary, a sort of model village, and in this village, a school where he proposes to teach the language and the literature of his country. I do not know what is the result of this attempt, but it seems to me interesting, being an attempt purely indigenous in character toward perfectment, attempted alongside of the effort toward perfectionment by adaptation of European civilization which has so badly succeeded in Liberia.” Again, after having given an attractive description of the first impression made upon the stranger by Liberia and its inhabitants, our author proceeds to say: “Now, the spectacle which offers itself to the eyes of the visitor is less beautiful. It is the spectacle of a nation in decadence. And this fact of a nation not yet a century old which, starting from nothing, raised itself in twenty years to its apogee, and has commenced, at the end of barely sixty years, to fall into decay, this fact, I say, deserves that one should pause, for at first sight it is not natural. And it can only find its explanation in the theory which I attempt to develop here, to wit: That the negroes in general, and the Liberians in particular, are eminently susceptible of perfectionment and progress, but that this perfectionment and this progress are destined to a sudden check, and even to a prompt decadence, if one has sought to orient them in the direction of our European civilization.