INTELLECTUAL AND PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 63 



wished to deceive themselves ; they have wished to raise the 

 Negro race to our own level, in the name of some sort of sen- 

 timental feeling, which, moreover, has always turned out to be 

 a mistake. Many persons have been engaged upon them. 

 Not being able to give them plastic equality, they had recourse 

 to intelligence, they wished to deceive themselves, like Des- 

 demona, when she said, 



"I saw Othello's visage in his mind."* 



The Negro was declared to be our equal by the moral law, only 

 with certain shades of distinction depending on some particular 

 and transient circumstances which would soon disappear. It 

 was announced that, in their turn, they would advance ideas, 

 and would work at what is called progress, that is to say, f ' the 

 increase of good on the earth. "f " In proportion as work 

 makes vital energy to predominate in the head," said M. Marcel 

 de Serres in 1844, "these deeply coloured men,{ with crisped, 

 woolly, or short hair, will tend in a manifest manner towards 

 the white race, will march with them in the path of pro- 

 gress.^ And farther on, " This experiment has scarcely com- 

 menced, but it already shows sensible effects." Unfortunately, 

 the twenty years which have passed since these words were 

 written, have not shown that they are true ; and the challenge 

 offered by an American has never yet been accepted, " Let 

 anyone quote to me one single line written by a Negro which 

 is worthy of being remembered." || They are not more ad- 

 vanced now than at the time when Mohammed refused them the 

 gift of prophecy. ^[ And, as Dr. Hunt remarks, there is cer- 



* Othello, Act I, Scene 3. [Othello was, however, a Moor, not a Negro, and 

 capable of a far higher delicacy of mental perceptions than the veritable 

 " unbleached African." Perhaps one of the most absurd theatrical errors 

 was committed when the part of Othello was acted by a genuine Negro, Ira 

 Aldridge. EDITOR.] 



f Edmond About, Le Progres, 1864, p. 15. 



J These are Negroes of whom he is speaking. 



" De I' Unite de I'Espece Humaine," Biblioth. Univ. de Geneve, nouv. ser., 

 vol. liv, p. 145, 1844. 



|| Gliddon, Types of Mankind, p. 59. Cams has observed, that among the 

 remarkable Negroes mentioned by Blumenbach, not one of them was distin- 

 guished either in politics, literature, or in any high conception of art. Com- 

 pare Gobineau, De I'Inegalite des Races Humaines, vol. i, p. 122, 1853. 



f See De MaiUet, Telliamed, 8vo, vol. ii, p. 187, Amsterdam, 1748. For 

 want of those passages of the Koran to which he refers, we give the whole 



