“At the Declaration of Independence, in 1776, the whole population of the United States was not very different in point of numbers, from that of the colored population now residing in the Southern States. The country had then been settled for more than 200 years, and there were large interests of production and commerce and government, which would seem to demand very liberal provisions for higher institutions of learning. But it may be doubted whether the advantages for education were not inferior to those now possessed by the colored population of the South, after a probation in freedom of scarcely more than a dozen years. The only colleges which appeared to have been in existence at that time are in existence still, and can be told by the number of your fingers. We have seen that there are now in the South, for the benefit of the negro, between 30 and 40 institutions for higher education, with an annual catalogue of nearly 5,000 students; and although they do not, as yet, graduate annually through all the higher departments of learning as many scholars as were graduated from the 10 colleges that were in operation prior to the Revolutionary War, because the training is not for scholarship, but for special work, it seems probable that the educational power is greater and exerts a wider influence. “But whether this is so or not, the result of these brief years of Christian work must be regarded as a phenomenon in the history of the world. It is often said of the movements of our time that they are only history repeating itself; but if there is anything in history like this generous outpouring of effort and means to redeem a great mass of human merchandise, and lift it up out of its squalor and wretchedness to the level of our common Christian manhood, we exhort the friends of history to produce it.” We gladly avail ourselves of this opportunity, to recognize the generous appreciation of our work which we have always received from our Methodist friends—indeed, some of them are “ourselves”—not the least valuable indication of which is the cordial and kindly tone of the article from which we have quoted above from their leading Review. WHAT CAN THE WOMEN DO? We are gratified with the evidence which is coming to us from various quarters, of an increasing interest in our Southern work on the part of our Christian women. A letter from Rhode Island inquires the cost of supporting a female missionary to work among the colored women of the South in their homes, after the plan mentioned in the January MISSIONARY. Another letter from Vermont asks, more generally, What can the women do? How can they best help the work by money and by goods? A word comes even from a missionary in Constantinople, endorsing Caucasian women’s work for Negro women in America.