But with this “wealth of beauty” of the Caucasian woman, what an immeasurable interval separates her from the negress! Is it possible for any who sees the latter, with her short, stiff, uncombable fleece of seeming wool, to endow her with the attribute of beauty or comeliness? And though somewhat less palpable in the other sex, the hair is an essential element of manly beauty as well as dignity, and the “love locks” of the cavaliers and even the “soap locks” of more modern times, are identified with certain conceptions of manly grace. Can any one form such conceptions in respect to the hair of the negro? Can he identify any of these things with the crisp, stiff, seeming wool that covers the head of that race? Can the sentiment of beauty, grace or dignity, or indeed any idea whatever—except as a necessary provision of nature for covering the negro head—attach to the hair of the negro? This is all that is possible to the mind of a white person in actual juxtaposition with the negro, and therefore while the European Abolitionist may fancy his head adorned by “ambrosial curls,” our own native Abolitionists are wholly unable to conceive of any use or purpose whatever for that dense mat of wiry and twisted hair which covers the negro head, except as a provision of nature for its protection. The protection of the head, or rather of the brain, is the purpose or the function of the hair in all races, but while that, in our race, is identified with elevated and striking qualities, it is the sole purpose in the case of the negro. The short, crisp, dense mass that covers the negro head, like every other quality or attribute of the negro nature, is in perfect harmony with the climatic and external circumstances with which God has surrounded him. The popular notion that the negro skull is much thicker than that of the white man originated from this peculiarity of the covering of the negro head. The hair is so dense, so curled and twisted together, and forms such a complete mat or net work as to be wholly impenetrable to the rays of a vertical sun, and to furnish a vastly better protection for the brain than the thickest felt hat does to that of the white man. Thus, though negroes on our southern plantations, with the imitative instincts of their race, copy after the whites and wear hats, it is merely a “fashionable folly,” and dictated by no natural want, nor in the slightest degree adds to their happiness. And beside the protection from the fierce heats of the tropics, the hair of the negro protects his head in other respects. It is so hard and wiry, and in fact triangular in form, that a blow from the hand of a master would doubtless injure the latter vastly more than it would the head of the negro, and the common practice among them of butting each other with their heads, though knocking them off their feet, and the concussion heard at considerable distances, never results in injury, for the dense mat of semi-wool that