LIBERIA. 



LITERATURE. 



433 



July 21, 1859, Imt it was too Into; Tuscany 

 was arrayed against Austria iltiring tlio whole 

 iif tin- \\.ir of 1859, and soon after its close, 

 notwithstanding the provisions of the Treaty 

 iln Franca, was annexed to Sardinia, and 

 uscan princes wore forced to remain in 

 f\ilr. Leopold II. was in private life a man of 

 fine attainments as a scholar and antiquarian. 

 Hi- li.-ul edited and published in most sumptuous 

 style the works of Lorenzo di Medici in 4 vols., 

 folio: Florence, 1825. 



LIHKKIA, a republic of Western Africa, 

 founded in 1822; declaration of independence 

 dated July 26, 1847. President, elected Janu- 

 ary :i, 1870, E. J. Roge; Vice-President, J. 8. 

 Smith; Secretary of State, J. N. Lewis. The 

 Legislature is composed of the Senate and the 

 Huns.: of Representatives ; the Vice-President 

 of the republic is Speaker of the Senate, which 

 consists of 8 members, elected for the term of 

 four years; the House of Representatives has 

 13 members, elected for the term of two years. 

 Tha republic has concluded commercial trea- 

 ties with the United States, the North-German 

 Confederation, Great Britain, France, Belgium, 

 Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, 

 Portugal, Austria, and Hayti. 



The Republic of Liberia, originally a colony 

 of emancipated slaves from the United States, 

 under the auspices of the American Coloniza- 

 tion Society, has now had a government of its 

 own for more than twenty years. The hopes 

 which were entertained by its founders and by 

 the Colonization Society in the United States, in 

 regard to the development and welfare of the 

 young republic, have been thus far but partly 

 realized. The country is uncommonly rich in 

 natural resources, but the Liberians are unwill- 

 ing to apply themselves to agricultural pursuits, 

 and do not, up to this time, produce a sufficiency 

 of the necessaries of life for their own subsist- 

 ence. Shipments of flour and salt-beef are an- 

 nually made from the United States, and dis- 

 tributed among the inhabitants. The consul 

 of the North-German Confederation at Mon- 

 rovia reported to his government, in 1868, that 

 the commerce of the country was still entirely 

 disproportionate to its natural resources, to the 

 great extent of the coast, and the available har- 

 bors. The attention of the trading class of the 

 population was almost exclusively directed to 

 the traffic with the wild natives in the interior, 

 with whom they exchange articles of European 

 manufacture against palm-oil, dye-woods, and 

 ivory, which constitute the staple articles for 

 export. In 1868, the imports of manufactured 

 articles from North-German ports were esti- 

 mated at $200,000. 



Concerning the immigration of negroes from 

 America, the consul reports as "follows : 



The immigrants, after landing at the port of destina- 

 tion, are furnished with the necessaries of life for the 

 next six months, the provisions being, however, not 

 generally of good quality. They are then brought un- 

 der shelter in large barns.-in which from one hundred 

 to one hundred and fifty live together. Flour, butter, 

 VOL. x. 23 A 



ham, and choee, soon get spoiled, and become utterly 

 unpalatable ; mu w-comers are prostrated 



by fever during the first month of their residence in 

 the country, while hardly one of them remains exempt 

 from disease during the second month. Their tem- 

 porary residence soon becomes extremely filthy, which 

 circumstance, together with the immtncient medical 

 attendance, produces great mortality, one fourth of 

 their number being carried off during the first six 

 months after their arrival. After the lapse of this 

 period, the surviving immigrants are compelled to 

 leave their provisional abode, without finding new 

 homes, and without sufficient means to erect comfort- 

 able dwelling-houses. They build miserable huts, 

 and commence the tilling and cultivation of a small 

 patch of land, on which they raise potatoes and 

 manioc. The majority remain in a suffering condition, 

 and a great many of them die before they are one year 

 in the country. It might be profitable to plant coffee- 

 trees ; unfortunately, nowofer, they do not become 

 productive until they are six years old. 



The public schools are in a wretched condition, all 

 the flattering reports to the contrary notwithstanding. 

 It appears to me that it would be decidedly more ap- 

 propriate to keep these ignorant people in a country, 

 where there are better schools, where all the means 

 of their gradual civilization are abundant, and where 

 they can easily provide for their own material wel- 

 fare, rather than to send them over here, where the 

 greater number of them inevitably relapse into com- 

 plete barbarism. 



LITERATURE AND LITERARY PROG- 

 RESS IN 1870. The year 1870, if the num- 

 ber only of publications be considered, would 

 compare not unfavorably with the preceding 

 twelvemonth in respect to literary productive- 

 ness. But the number of books that lay claim 

 to notice, as solid additions to the literature of 

 the English language in America, is small. This, 

 indeed, proves nothing as to our intellectual ac- 

 tivity. The valuable books that issued from the 

 press last year were written in the years' pre- 

 ceding; the books written last year, or in pro- 

 cess of writing, will b.o published and reported 

 hereafter. While war and political agitations 

 have checked literary pursuits in a large part 

 of Europe, and the Vatican Council, with its 

 anti-climax of the downfall of the temporal 

 power, added to the intensity with which the 

 public mind is determined to the consideration 

 of religious and ecclesiastical topics with a 

 decided revolutionary tendency we in this 

 country could not look for exemption from 

 their influence. Our traditional isolation from 

 Europe, politically, may be maintained for an 

 indefinite period. Interest here coincides with 

 a conservative and reverential sense of duty to 

 maintain the policy of Washington. But the tele- 

 graph and rapid mail communication bring us 

 into close neighborhood with the Old World, 

 and vicinity excites sympathy. So our peri- 

 odical writing is on topics similar to those that 

 occupy European writers, and the people's 

 thoughts follow. On our side of the sea there 

 is a new set of political and social questions 

 coming up, demanding settlement, the remote 

 prospect of action on them encouraging inde- 

 pendent speculation. This suspense of action 

 gives an aimless look to discussion. But, though 

 the total product does not amount to much in 

 the lists of new books, it is enough to indicate 



