I am profoundly impressed with the importance of the schools, and especially of the higher institutions established by the American Missionary Association, and by the Mission Boards of other Christian denominations. These institutions must train multitudes of competent teachers, who will educate the masses. In these institutions must also be educated a native ministry to meet the wants of their people at home, and to carry the Gospel to the dark continent from which their fathers came. It is difficult to conceive of a work more important, or promising more beneficent results, than that which is being done by the higher educational institutions for the Freedmen. The importance of enlarging their capacity for receiving pupils, and enabling them to aid indigent pupils in defraying the expenses of their education, cannot be over-estimated. The relation of the Freedmen to politics raises questions that are very perplexing and threatening. The Southern States have, for the present, virtually disfranchised the colored men; and they seem united and firm in the purpose to exclude them from all influence in politics, unless they will vote for the party that so recently sought to perpetuate their bondage by a dissolution of the Union. What, then, should the colored men do, and what should their friends do for them? Many of them are intelligent and patriotic, and worthy to have a share in the government of the State and the nation. But many of them are as utterly unfit, at present, for such responsibility as are the most ignorant classes in our Northern cities; but they are improving. Every year adds to their intelligence, and if the helping hand of Christian philanthropy is not withheld, they will, by education, by temperance, by morality and more intelligent piety, by industry and the accumulation of property, win for themselves a position of respectability. They will not then need soldiers to protect them at the polls. They will take care of themselves. Their ballots will be received and counted. Not only so, among the whites there will be two parties, as of old, that will vie with each other in soliciting the colored vote, by out-bidding each other in the promise of favors in return. Is it not wisdom, then, for the colored man patiently to bide his time, meanwhile striving more earnestly for the qualifications than for the rights of a voter? And is it not wiser for the friends of the Freedmen to furnish him every facility for acquiring the qualifications of a voter, than to wrangle forever about his rights? * * * * * Emerson Institute—Early Discouragements, Later Encouragements. REV. D. L. HICKOK, MOBILE.