The result is encouragement not uncoupled with anxiety. A great work has been accomplished, beyond question—great in immediate effect, though more so in its prospective bearing. It is rather a great seed sowing than a great harvest. Thousands have been taught the rudiments of knowledge, and a select few have received a higher training. Some ambition has been roused in the masses, and a little progress has been made in supplying them with more intelligent leaders in church and in state. No doubt remains that the Negro may be rendered capable of filling all the stations in life which are occupied by white men. Ordinary acquirements are made with creditable ease. The higher education can also be acquired by the proper proportion of students, but this effort is only partially successful as yet. Poor material is too commonly offered, not only as to native talent, but especially as regards thorough drill in primary studies and the commencement of genuine mental discipline. With an imperfect drill in the lower schools, we can do no perfect work in the higher branches, and we find it difficult to develop and sustain in the mind the idea of a true scholarship, and of the lofty aims of a liberal education. It is but slowly that such an intellectual atmosphere can be made to pervade the colored colleges of the South as is found in the white colleges of the New England States. But the work must be pushed till such a result shall be secured. Progress always entails added labor and expense. What has been already accomplished by the A. M. A. must not be lost, and the vantage ground must be used to gain new results. When students graduate, their places are more than occupied by others, who have been moved by their example to seek for knowledge. As the spirit of caste is overcome, and places of honor and profit begin to open to colored men, fully qualified persons must be ready to embrace the new opportunities. Every educated and earnest Christian minister sent forth from our institutions will not only supply his immediate church, but will probably organize in the outlying neighborhood one or two others, requiring similar pastors in a short time. And he will also inspire the uneducated preachers of that region to aim at higher work, and to seek school privileges. It is a frequent remark, that the theological department of Howard University has, by direct and indirect influence, revolutionized the preaching in the colored churches of all denominations in Washington, which number about eighty, it is said. Thus the A. M. A. is a leaven hidden in the Southern meal, and destined, with similar influences, to leaven the entire mass.