a man; but he stopped at a point as if arrested by a divine will. There is not a shadow of proof that the negro described by Werne differs in any way from the negro of the time of Sesostris. It is not quite certain even that the race, when started again, would, as a race, go on improving. The Haytians, who are Christians, who are free, and who are in the fullest contact with great white races, are believed to be retrograding; and only the hopeful would believe in the future of American slaves, if they were to be expelled, as De Tocqueville thought they would ultimately be, to the islands, or, as is infinitely more probable, should the war of races ever break out, to Central America.

As far as we see, nothing really im proves the negro except one of two causes, - cross-breeding, and catching hold of some foreign but superior creed. The cross-breeds of the Soudan and of South Africa seem to have some fine qualities — matchless courage, for example- and under a strict but vivifying white rule

most "massive" of the four continents, South Africa, into a puny being hardly like and has been, so to speak, lost to humanity; but he was always on the Nile, the immediate road to the Mediterranean, and in west and east Africa he was on the sea. Africa is probably more fertile, and almost certainly richer than Asia, and is pierced by rivers as mighty, and some of them at least as navigable. What could a singularly healthy race, armed with a constitution which resists the sun, and defies malaria, wish for better than to be seated on the Nile, or the Congo, or the Niger, in numbers amply sufficient to execute any needed work, from the cutting of forests and the making of roads up to the building of cities? How was the negro more secluded than the Peruvian; or why was he "shut up" worse than the Tartar of Samarcand, who one day shook himself, gave up all tribal feuds, and from the Sea of Okhotsk to the Baltic, and southwards to the Nerbudda, mastered the world? One Tartar family was reigning at one time over China, Tartary, India, and Russia. Why has the negro, who is brave as man may be, alone of mankind never emerged from his jungles, and sub-might, we fancy, be brought in a century dued neighboring races? Why has he never invented a creed of the slightest spiritual or moral merit, never, in fact, risen above fetishism? Above all, why has he remained in Africa for three thousand years at least, without forming empires or building stone cities, or employing a common medium of intercommunication? Mr. Blyden says he has formed cities full of busy life and commerce; but have they ever been better than encampments, and why have they not lasted? We who write certainly do not believe in the incurable incapacity of the race, for we know of Bishop Crowther and Mr. Blyden, and have talked with negroes apparently as thoughtful and as well instructed as any Europeans; but we confess that the history of the race remains to us an insoluble puzzle, except upon the theory that there are breeds of mankind in whom that strangest of all phenomena, the arrestment of development, occurs at a very early stage. The negro went by himself far beyond the Australian savage. He learned the uses of fire, the fact that sown grain will grow, the value of shelter, the use of the bow and the canoe, and the good of clothes; but there to all appearance he stopped, unable, until stimulated by another race like the Arab, to advance a step. He did not die, like the Australian. He did not sink, like one or two varieties of the Red Indian, and of the aborigines of

or two up to the Asiatic level. They produce generals, at all events, and chiefs with some tincture of statesmanship, and have poetry and a folk-lore of their own. Those negroes, again, who have embraced Islam do show a certain manliness, a capacity for aggregation, and a tendency, at all events, to form kingdoms, and organize armies, and obey laws, which are the first steps towards a higher civilization. It is not a high civilization, for when all is said, a Mohammedan negro is not an ideal of humanity towards which Europeans can look with any feeling of enthu siasm; but still, it is higher, far higher, than the condition of the African pagan. The negro who embraces Christianity, again, while he remains in contact with the white man distinctly advances. Uncle Tom is an abnormal specimen, it may be, and we are not inclined to place the moral condition of the negroes of the Southern States very high; but still, they have displayed a perfectly wonderful absence of vindictiveness towards the former slave-owners, obey the ordinary laws with fair regularity, and keep themselves above starvation by the labor of their own hands. The best of them, moreover, rise far be yond this point, the South containing both doctors and lawyers who, by the admission of the whites, are thoroughly competent men; and it may be said of the whole body that, though not equal to any Euro

pean community of the same extent, they | Navigation; " which art, Kelly says in are far superior to any four millions of his preface, "is allowed by all, and well pagan negroes who could be selected in known by those of the noble tribe of ZabAfrica. As they cannot owe this rise in ulon to be one by which islands are enthe scale to slavery, which at the best rich'd and preserv'd from invasion, the could only drill the negroes to industry, wonderful works of an omnicient Creator and at the worst must beget a permanent in the wide ocean and remote nations dedistaste for labor, the change must be lightfully beheld, etc.; while 'tis no mean owing to Christianity, plus the operation accomplishment to be capable of conductof laws based upon that faith. It follows ing a ship richly laden round the world." that the largest group of negroes under The first part of Kelly's book treats of civilized observation, the descendants, as what our master mariner quaintly calls is believed, of four widely distinguished "Domestic or coasting navigation." From tribes, have been raised in the scale of this essay it appears that the deep-sea humanity by embracing a rude form of the lead of that time was so frequently and Christian faith. The total conclusion, carefully employed that the bottom of the therefore, as yet justified by evidence is British Channel was thoroughly known, that intermarriage, especially with the from Scilly to Dunnose. The results of Arab, improves the negro tribes, that they the inquiry are carefully recorded by gain in manliness by embracing Islam, Kelly in a table, from which we learn and that they gain in the social virtues by that "twenty-five miles E. by N. of Silly embracing Christianity, the latter to a Islands, in seventy-two fathoms," the seadegree measured by the depth and earnest- bottom was then "pepper sand, black and ness of their faith. At home, when un-yellow, passing into branny sand like conquered and unconverted, they do not advance, and the point still doubtful is whether, when left to themselves, they will not, even when converted, again recede or step. The Abyssinians, who are Semites, have been Christians for ages. The conclusion is not very satisfactory; but it is certain that races of imperfect powers existe.g., the Australian aborigines and that Providence does, for unknown purposes, occasionally waste even fine races,- e.g., the Maoris, who will, to all appearance, die out, having fulfilled no function at all, not even that of preparing the way for the ultimate occupants of their country.

From St. James's Gazette.

EARLY ENGLISH NAVIGATORS AND THEIR

NAUTICAL INSTRUMENTS.

Fur

ground wheat." Then comes "ouse sand,
with Queen shells; white sand with ouse
and nits; followed by "branny sand,
herring-bones, and small stones.'
ther up Channel, near the Lizard, the
lead showed "marshy shells like oatmeal
husks;" while off the (at that time old
wooden) Eddistone lighthouse the bottom
resembled "the dust off a grindstone, with
hakes' teeth." What a contrast is this
minute investigation to the hasty glance
of a modern seaman, taking flying shots
at it with Sir William Thompson's sound-
ing-tubes as he rushes up Channel at thir-
teen knots!

For want of correct time-keepers, a ship's longitude at sea was then an unsolved problem; but Kelly describes what he calls "five of the most rational ways of finding it" wisely, however, advising 66 no one to confide too much in them, or to omit any of the methods of a journal, or other precautions, to preserve a ship when she nears land." Among these five

ter's satellites of course come first. But of one of these he says, "This method would be accurate and useful if we could have an eclipse of the moon every night;" while of the other he remarks, that the impracticability of managing a telescope twelve feet or fourteen feet long in the tossing, rolling motion of a ship at sea surrounds it with difficulties scarce to be remedied.

AN advertisement of about the year 1720 tells us that “in Broad Street, Wap-methods, eclipses of the moon and Jupiping, near Wapping-new-stairs, are taught the mathematical sciences, navigation, astronomy, dialling, gauging, gunnery, fortifycation, the use of the globes, and the projection of the sphere upon any circle, by Joshua Kelly, mariner. With whom young gentlemen and others are well boarded, and compleatly and expeditiously qualify'd (on reasonable terms) for any business relating to accompts and the mathematicks." This Joshua Kelly was the author of "The Compleat Modern Navigator's Tutor, or the Whole Art of

The craving of these early navigators for some form of good sea time-keeper is shown by Kelly's fourth "method of

finding the longitude by automatas or un- the little wooden midshipmen that stood erring clocks, watches, or hour-glasses; outside the doors of London opticians. where directions are given for preparing The cross-staff or fore-staff was a still and using a "very perfect and true-run- older and simpler contrivance for measurning sand-glass, which may precisely run ing angles between the fixed stars or the twenty-four hours without error, to be set sun and the sea horizon. It was merely exactly at noon on leaving the land; which a four-sided straight staff or bar of hard upon being run out is to be turned instant- wood, with four cross-pieces of different ly, not losing any time in the turning of lengths, which were made to slide upon it." "And so," says Kelly, “having very it as the cross-piece does upon a shoewarily kept the said glass 'til you think maker's rule. These cross-pieces were good to make an observation at noon, and respectively called the ten, thirty, sixty, having in readiness an half-hour, minute, and ninety cross, and were used upon the and half-minute glass, you may thereby staff according to the altitude of the sun know exactly how much the twenty-four or star at time of observation. One cross hour glass is before or after the ship's only was used upon the staff at a time; time; the difference being your longitude the angle measured being shown by a east or west, according as the time by the scale of degrees and minutes intersected sun is afore or after the time by the by the cross-piece on that side of the staff glass." Time on ship-board was then to which it (the cross) belonged. It was always measured by hour and half-hour with this simple but really effective inglasses; and in accounts of old sea-fights | strument that Columbus, Drake, and other such expressions as, "We engaged the en- early navigators, took their meridian sights emy over three glasses before he hauled for latitude, etc. A fine specimen in boxdown his ensigns" often occur. Naviga- wood and ebony is still preserved in the tion by account, or dead reckoning, has Naval Museum, Madrid. It is probably changed little since then. Indeed, the as old as the days of Columbus, if not the introduction of chronometers and the al- actual instrument that first crossed the most perfect accuracy of observations | Atlantic in the hands of that seaman. taken with the modern sextant, etc., have almost superseded it, except in the case of small coasters. But in Kelly's day, and for years afterward, the log-line, logchip, reel, and half-minute glass were a mariner's only means of knowing his longitude or distance sailed east or west. Steam and patent logs have greatly simplified calculations which in Kelly's time required numberless corrections, not only for leeway, etc., but for errors in the logline and glasses; and he tells us that "shortness of the knots in a line are on the safer side, that a ship be not ahead of her reckoning; it being better to look for land before we come at it than to be ashoar before we expect it."

Though the old shipmen had no means of finding the longitude at sea, they were fairly provided with instruments for latitude. And our master mariner gives full directions for taking meridian altitudes with a "cross-staff," and the "sea-quadrant," known also as "Davis's quadrant;' it was invented by that early navigator in Elizabeth's reign. This was a much larger and more cumbersome machine than Hadley's quadrant, which superseded it a few years later; being nearly three feet in length, with two distinct arcs of differing radius upon one frame. Long after it had ceased to be used at sea, this old instrument remained in the hands of

Besides the cross-staff, a form of quadrant called an "Almacantar staff," was used a little after sunrise or before sunset to find the sun's azimuth and the variation of the compass; while among mariners whose voyages did not extend south of the tropics an instrument called the "nocturnal gave them the time of night by observing with it the hands of the great star-clocks Ursa Major and Minor as they turned about the pole-star.

From The Spectator.

NEW NAMES FOR NEW STATES.

THE inarticulateness which is sometimes said to be the mark of Englishmen - it is not just now the reproach which editors would cast at them is receiving a curious illustration on the Southern Continent. The settlers in New South Wales have suddenly woke up to the fact that the name of their colony is ill-reputed, cumbrous to use, and incapable of an adjective, and have resolved to change it. They are right, for the name is not yet consecrated by time, and all the charges they bring against it are more or less wellfounded. A savor of convictism still adheres to New South Wales, the name is absurdly long and entirely without jus

tification, and the absence of an adjective | and if there did but exist a name describdiminishes the individuality of the colo- ing the inhabitants of that peninsula, the nists, and, consequently, the fervor of federation of the Balkan would be years their local patriotism. A "New South nearer to its accomplishment. A name Welshman" is unmanageable, and, be- with bad associations in the ears of the sides, suggests a Celtic relationship which world is a dead weight upon its people, does not exist; while a "New South and an island named Murderland would no Welsher" would, in a land of horses and more fill up than a colony named Botany sporting men, be considered invidious and Bay. discreditable. This absence of an adjec The people of New South Wales are, tive presses heavily upon any people therefore, quite in the right in changing determined to be distinctive. It has de- the name of their colony, and we do not stroyed the utility of "Great Britain" as believe in the least in the difficulty of a common description for this island, and effecting the transmutation. Well-known has compelled the citizens of the United names of streets are changed every day; States to seize upon a title to which they though we have all read "Paul and Vir have at best but a remote reversionary ginia," we have all forgotten the Isle of claim. They call themselves " Americans," France; and no man now addresses a letas if they possessed both divisions of ter to Van Dieman's Land. The colonists the Continent, whereas they will probably not be even "North Americans," as the Spaniards call them, for another fifty years, and may wait for universal sovereignty in the West for at least two centuries. It is true that some of the most patriotic States in the Union have names not admitting of adjectives, such as Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maine; but their citizens would be happier if they could avoid periphrasis, and describe themselves in brief as Virginians, Texans, Marylanders, and Californians do. It can only have been necessity which has compelled the people of New York, while York has no adjective, to call themselves "New Yorkers," a name the utter grotesqueness of which is only concealed by habitual usage. Let Colorado prosper ever so greatly, or even pay the debt of the Union with its cinnabar," as Mr. Lincoln once said it would do, and still a Texan will seem to himself to stand closer to his State because he describes himself simply by her name. A good name, too, is an advantage as well as a manageable one. France is a different country from what Gallia would have been; and if we called Germany by its proper name of Deutschland, we should understand the separateness of its people far more completely than we do, and probably place them lower. We lose all sense of the unity of India because we never employ the proper adjective, Indians, to describe its people, and if we had chanced to adopt the Hindoo name for the vast peninsula, "Bharata varshya" or "Bharutsland," we should have formed a radically different a priori idea of its people and their continent. The house of Hapsburg owes half its position to the rather absurd habit of describing all its subjects as Austrians;

66

may be sure of success for any name except the one which, in a fit of perversity, they have chosen to adopt. They appear, in fact, to have been fettered by that failure of inventive power which marks alike British builders and founders of American cities. The former, in their despair and their modesty, usually choose some muchused name, till there are, we believe, more than fifty George Streets in London alone; while the latter steal some name from a map of Europe, and plant Rome down in Minnesota, or Carthage in the interior of New Mexico. The New South Welshmen hunted and searched for an acceptable name, but found none, and at last, with the oddest mixture of powerlessness and pride, declared that they would resume their old one, and call their colony by the name of the entire continent. New South Wales should be Australia, and themselves Australians. The local Legislature has actually passed a bill to this effect, and the local premier defends the choice as a mere right of his colony, an act not of audacity, but of resumption. This pretension is simply absurd. The word was, we believe, applied to the colony when it alone was inhabited by white men; but it has now been accepted finally as the descriptive name of the continent, and its adoption for a mere section would introduce endless confusion, not only in postoffices and children's geographies, but on the exchanges of the world. An Austra lian loan is not a loan guaranteed by New South Wales. Naples might as well call itself Italy, or Greece, as the oldest civilized country in our quarter of the world, arrogate to itself the name of Europe. The colony may call itself East Australia it it likes, and would perhaps be wise in doing so, for the name, though too preten