When we ourselves returned to South Africa after ten years' absence in Europe, and were therefore able to view our birth-fellows almost impartially, the true born South African man, whether Dutch or English, reminded us of nothing so much as those huge shaggy watch-dogs, which lie before their masters' houses placid and kindly, whom you may stumble over and kick, almost with impunity; but when once you have gone too far and he rises and shakes himself, you had best flee. There is little doubt that, in the great blended South African nation that is coming to its birth, this mental attitude will be a leading characteristic; exactly as quickness and alertness is a distinguishing mark of the Americans of the Northern and Western States. It appears probable that exactly as we shall be marked by our large, powerful bony structure and heavy muscular strength, we shall be marked by a certain gentle passivity, covering immense emotional intensity and dogged persistency; that the great men we shall produce will not be so often keen financiers and speculators as artists and thinkers; that our national existence will culminate, not in producing versatility and skill, but persistency and depth, in our most typical individuals. We shall probably always be a people more easily guided through our affections and sympathies than almost any other, and more impossible to subdue by force. Whether the cause lie mainly in the nature of the Boer or the Bantu, this is certain, that the African native has not tended to melt away with anything of the rapidity with which the Indian was exterminated by the English American in the north, and by the Spaniard in the south of the American continent; nor in the two hundred years the Dutch have been in South Africa is any incident so painful recorded as that which is universally accepted, and has not, we believe, been authentically denied, with regard to the treatment of the natives of India, when men who, however brutally, had been fighting in defence of their native land, were, before being blown from the gun's mouth, compelled to lick up the blood of the persons they had killed, in order that the fear of eternal damnation might be added to the other horrors of death. No analogous incident, sinking civilized man so far below the level of the wild beast and the primitive savage, has we believe ever been recorded of the African Boer, even when his women and children have been killed and mutilated by scores. The same equality in the treatment of the dark races, whichever may be the white race concerned, is illustrated when we consider the condition of the African native in the different States into which South Africa is divided.