Thirty-six years ago, when the present Sovereign of the Congo Free State succeeded his father as King of the Belgians, and became known to the world as Leopold II., Africa was generally referred to as the “Dark Continent.” At that period, and for long after, even the most optimistic of statesmen failed to perceive in those vast regions any promising outlet for the congested populations of the Old World, or possible markets for their manufactures. Diamonds, small in quantity and of indifferent quality, had, it is true, been discovered in the southernmost part of that continent, in a region already appropriated by the British. Gold, also, was thought to exist there, but not in paying quantities; while the deadliness of the African climate to Europeans, in all save a few favoured sections, was an universally accepted article of faith. Foremost among the small band of thinkers who totally dissented from this view was Leopold II., King of the Belgians. A young man of extraordinarily fine physique, an accomplished linguist, widely read and travelled, and holding advanced liberal views in all matters pertaining to statecraft and social science, King Leopold had early the prescience to perceive in Africa the means to uplift some twenty or more millions of the Negro race from debased savagery to peaceful civilisation, and at the same time and by the same means—the latter a necessarily accompanying incident of the former—found a colony for the surplus population of the small State of which he is King; Belgium being then, as now, the most densely populated of European countries, its people almost entirely dependent on the sale abroad of the products of their industry. Bold and original ideas rarely find much favour when first presented to the world. The bulk of mankind is conservative; it thinks of yesterday, is oppressed by the troubles of to-day, and lets to-morrow take care of itself. At first, where King Leopold’s ideas for the regeneration of Africa attracted any attention at all, they were regarded with bland smiles as utopian visions, more creditable to the heart than to the head of the princely visionary. But true genius, though it may be hampered and delayed in its onward march, is not to be extinguished either by active opposition or cold indifference. Of such calibre is King Leopold, or there would to-day be no Congo Free State, nor what some past-masters in the obscuration of the obvious are sometimes pleased to call “the Congo Question.” [Sidenote: A Prophetic Sentence.] [Sidenote: Gladstone’s Choice.]