the sun is making some gift of its blood to our American veins. Immigration from foreign lands was never so multitudinous as now. Leaving out of view our native-born Americans of English descent, there are enough other stocks on this soil to make three other nations-namely, the Irish, the Germans, and the Negroes. Even the Negroes number one million more than did the whole population of the United States at the adoption of the Constitution. These three stocks have come hither not to establish themselves as distinct peoples, but each to join itself to each, till all together shall be built up into the monumental nation of the earth! Such interminglings of course are of slow growth, and not to be hastened. Thrifty nations are not grown like hot-house plants, by forcing. Nature, like God, is patient. Natural affinity between individuals is the one and only law by which races intermingle. Such affinities ripen tardily-not only between persons of dif ferent nationalities, but of different opinions and social position in the same nationality. There was a time in England when the Red Rose would not marry the White; a time in New England when a church-member would not marry a non-church-member. Twenty years ago, an American who married a foreigner was thought to have overstepped propriety; a narrowness of prejudice with which sensible people nowadays have no sympathy. But because we have Germans and Irish in this country, shall we undertake a political movement to persuade them to intermarry with Americans? Or shall we undertake a similar officious and impertinent movement with blacks and whites? To make the next Presidential campaign, as our pamphleteer suggests, turn on the advocacy of marriages between any two classes of our community-Saxons with Celts, fair faces with dark, Northerners with South

erners, Down-East Yankees with Californians-is so absurd as to furnish us another reason for thinking these piquant pages are a snare to catch some good folk for a laugh at them afterward.

We believe the whole human race are one familyborn, every individual, with a common prerogative to do the best he can for his own welfare; that in political societies, all men, of whatever race or color, should stand on an absolute equality before the law; that whites and blacks should intermarry if they wish, and should not unless they wish; that the negro is not to be allowed to remain in this country, but is to remain here without being allowed-asking nobody's permission but his own; that we shall have no permanent settlement of the negro question till our haughtier white blood, looking the negro in the face, shall forget that he is black, and remember only that he is a citizen.

But, on the other hand, we do not believe, with this book, that the rebellion arose from prejudice against color-for if the slaves were white, instead of black, their masters would be no less unwilling to give them up; nor do we believe in any forecasted scheme or humanlyplanned union of races; nor that the next Presidential election, nor any succeeding one, should have nothing to do with Miscegenation; nor can we see any reason why the Human Family shall exhibit in the future any less diversity of races than now-but more.

Whether or not, according to this anonymous prediction, the universal complexion of the human family at the millennium "will not be white or black, but brown or colored," we certainly believe that the African-tinted members of our community will in the future gradually bleach out their blackness. The facts of to-day prove

this beyond denial. Already three-fourths of the colored people of the United States have white blood in their veins. The two bloods have been gradually intermingling ever since there were whites and blacks among our population. This intermingling will continue. Under Slavery, it has been forced and frequent; under Freedom, it will be voluntary and infrequent. But by-and-by -counting the years not by Presidential campaigns, but by centuries-the negro of the South, growing paler with every generation, will at last completely hide his face under the snow.

February 25, 1864.

LYMAN BEECHER AND ROXANA

FOOTE.

HE Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher, edited by his son Charles, awakens vividly our recollection of a venerable man

seen not long ago walking the streets of Brooklyn, or rising to speak in the prayer-meetings at Plymouth Church, or sitting an attentive listener in the great congregation; his silvery hair falling low upon his shoulders; his fine appearance half disguising his infirmities; but his conversation garrulous and wandering, showing a strong man shorn of his strength-a giant withered to a child. We recall also, as if it were yesterday, the tolling of a bell-the gathering of a great assemblage the funeral discourse-the solemn strain of the organ-the serene face of the dead. Few men who die leave such living names as this old man's. Lyman Beecher will not be forgotten so long as Hopkins, Dwight, Payson, and Taylor are remembered.

The present book is something of a novelty in bookmaking—an autobiography not written by its subject, but snatched from his lips at intervals by his questioning family, and penned on the spot; many of the pages standing in the form of question and answer, the interrogator's name indicated by initials; making altogether an inartistic, loosely-joined, unsatisfactory, yet fascinating record-resembling, in parts, the report of a crossexamination in a law trial.

He

Through the perspective of such reminiscences, one sees the religious world under far different aspects from those of our own day; going back to a time when Hannah More was the star among religious writers; when Buchanan's travels in the East first awoke among the churches a spirit of. missions; when pious people used to read The Christian Observer; when Dr. Mason was the chief pulpit-orator of New York; when Gardiner Spring was beginning to be known as a young man eloquent; and when clergymen, at meetings of association, drank flip to unsteadiness and smoked pipes to blindness. Dr. Beecher's public life stretched through many varying phases of opinion, social, political, and religious. witnessed the passing away of many bad customs, and the adoption of better; also the fading-out of much that was good in the early days, that has not been since replaced. His own hand helped mightily to work out the beneficial changes which he lived to see accomplished. A power in his day and generation, the witness of his work remains. Never a conservative, nor ever quite a radical, he was a man who stood in the advance, if not in the van, and if not always a pioneer, yet always a leader. Seldom does it fall to a man's lot to exert so much moulding influence on one's times as God permitted to this sturdy minister. Multitudes now living-pillars of the commonwealth-confess that they received from this Christian teacher the solid foundation of their religious training. Reaching with the living voice, through a long life of incessant preaching, an uncounted host of impressible human souls, he set his seal upon them "in demonstration of the spirit and with power." A friend at our elbow, happening in upon us as we write, says: "I owe to Dr. Beecher's preaching more than to that of any other man,