MAN. 
admire the reasoning and humanity of those, 
who, after tearing the African from his 
native soil, carrying him to the West Indies, 
and dooming him thereto perpetual labour, 
complain that his understanding shews no 
signs of improvement, and that his temper 
and disposition are incorrigibly perverse, 
faithless, and treacherous. Let us however 
observe him in a somewhat more favourable 
state than in those dreadful receptacles of 
human misery, the crowded decks of the 
slave-ship, or in the less openly shocking, 
but constrained and extorted, and therefore 
painful, labours of the sugar plantation. 
The acute and accurate Barbot, in his 
large work on Africa, says, “ The blacks 
have sufficient sense and understanding, 
their conceptions are quick and accurate, 
and their memory possesses extraordinary 
strength. For, although they can neither 
read nor write, they never fall into con- 
fusion or error in the greatest hurry of 
business and traffic. Their experience of 
tl'.e knavery of Europeans has put them 
completely on their guard in transactions 
of exchange’, they carefully examined all 
our goods, piece by piece, to ascertain if 
their quality and measure are correctly 
stated ; and shew as much sagacity and 
clearness in all these transactions, as any 
European tradesman could do.” Of those 
imitative arts, in which perfection can be 
attained only in an improved state of so- 
ciety, it is natural to suppose that the 
Negroes can have but little knowledge ; but 
the fabric and colours of the Guinea cloths 
are proofs of their native ingenuity; and, 
that they are capable of learning all kinds 
of the more delicate manual labours, is 
proved by the fact, that nine-tenths of the 
■ artificers in the West Indies are Negroes : 
many are expert carpenters, and some 
watch-makers. The travels of Barrow, Le 
Vaillant, and Mungo I’ark, abound with 
anecdotes honourable to the moral charac- 
ter of the Africans, and firoving that they 
betray no deficiency in the amiable quali- 
ties of the heart. The former gives us a 
most interesting portrait of the chief of 
a tribe : “ His countenance was strongly 
marked with the habit of reflection ; vigor- 
ous in his mental, and amiable in his per- 
sonal qualities, Gaika was at once the friend 
and ruler of a happy people, who universally 
pronounced his name with transport, and 
blessed his abode as the seat of felicity." 
Alas ! many European kings would appear 
to very little advantage by the side of this 
savage. The drawings and busts executed 
by the wild Boshmen in the neighbourhood 
of the Cape are praised by the same traveL 
ler for their accuracy of outline, and cor- 
rectness of proportion. 
Instances are by no means wanting of 
Negroes who have distinguished themselves 
in literature and the arts, when favoured 
by fortune with opportunities of education 
and improvement. Freidig in Vienna was 
a capital performer on the violin, and an 
excellent draftsman. Hannibal, a colonel 
of artillery in the Russian service, was very 
well informed in the mathematical and 
physical sciences ; as also was Lislet of the 
isle of France, who was inade on that ac- 
count a corresponding member of the 
French academy. Fuller of Maryland was 
an extraordinary example of arithmetical 
knowledge : being asked in company how 
many seconds a man had lived, who was 
seventy years, and some odd months old, 
he gave the number in a minute and a half: 
on reckoning it, a different result was ob- 
tained; “ you have forgotten the leap 
years,” says the Negro: the necessary ad- 
dition brought it right. A. W. Amo took 
the degree of doctor in philosophy at 
'Wittenbgrg in 1734, and produced two in- 
genious and well-written dissertations : and 
Vasa and Ignatius Sancho have distin- 
guished tjiemselves as literary characters 
in this country. Blumenbach, after men- 
tioning these instances in his Beytrage zur 
Naturgeschichte, sarcastically observes, that 
entire and large provinces of Etirope might 
be named, which had not furnished such 
good writers, poets, philosophers and cor- 
respondents of the French academy; and 
he adds that no savage people have given 
such strong indications of a capability of 
improvement, and even of scientific cultiva- 
tion, as the Negroes; and consequently that 
none can approach more nearly to the 
polished nations of the globe. Let us con* 
elude then with tlie quaint but humane ob- 
servations of the preacher, who called the 
Negro “ God’s image, like ourselves, al- 
though carved in ebony.” 
We shall conclude the present article with 
giving the generic character of man; and a 
general description of the five varieties, 
into which the human race lias been divided 
by Blumenbach. 
Generic character : erect, two-handed 5 
prominent chin. Teeth of uniform height in 
an unbroken series ; the lower incisors per- 
pendicular. 
As we have shewn, on the one hand, 
that there is no circumstance of differ- 
ence between the varieties of the human 
race, which does not appear in a still 
