feeling of gloom which settles upon one as thoughts like the
following crowd into the mind. How much, how very much, has been lost
to art in this country through that fell spirit which for more than
two hundred years has animated the majority of its people against a
struggling and an unoffending minority,--a spirit which ever sought to
crush out talent, to quench the sacred fire of genius, and to crowd
down all noble aspirations, whenever these evidences of a high manhood
were shown by those whose skins were black! Ah! we may never know how
much of grandeur of achievement, the results of which the country
might now be enjoying, had not those restless, aspiring minds been
fettered by all that was the echo of a terrible voice, which, putting
to an ignoble use the holy words of Divinity, cried up and down the
land unceasingly, "_Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther!_" For to
judge as to what "might have been," and what yet may be, despite the
cruelties of the past (since, even in this instance, "the best prophet
of the future is the past"), we have only to look at what is. But from
those bitter days of a barbarous time, when hearts were oft bowed in
anguish, when tears of blood were wept, and when often attempts were
made to dwarf yearning intellect to a beastly level,--let us turn
quickly our weeping eyes from those terrible days, now gone, we hope
never again to return, towards that brighter prospect which opens
before our delighted vision: let us joyfully look upon what is, and
think of what may be. For

"The world is cold to him who pleads;
The world bows low to knightly deeds."

Returning, then, directly to the subject in hand (viz., the colored
musical artists of New Orleans), I first quote from a paper prepared
by a cultured gentleman of that city, himself a fine musician, the
following retrospective comment on some of the former residents
there:--

"For want of avenues in which to work their way in life, and for many
reasons which are easily understood, our best artists [colored]
removed to other countries in search of their rights, and of proper
channels in which to achieve success in the world. Among these were
Eugene Warburg, since distinguished in Italy as a sculptor; Victor
Sejour, in Paris, as a poet, and composer of tragedy; Caraby, in
France, as a lawyer; Dubuclet, in Bordeaux, as a physician and
musician; and many others." All these were forced to leave New
Orleans, their native city, be