at race distinctions
and habits are in a way to be improved off the face of the earth, and
that a most uninteresting monotony is supervening. The complaint is not
wholly sentimental, and has a deeper philosophical reason than the mere
pleasure in variety on this planet.

We find a striking illustration of the equalizing, not to say leveling,
tendency of the age in an able paper by Canon George Rawlinson, of the
University of Oxford, contributed recently to an American periodical of a
high class and conservative character.--["Duties of Higher towards Lower
Races." By George Rawlinson. Princeton Re-view. November, 1878. New
York.]--This paper proposes, as a remedy for the social and political
evils caused by the negro element in our population, the miscegenation of
the white and black races, to the end that the black race may be wholly
absorbed in the white--an absorption of four millions by thirty-six
millions, which he thinks might reasonably be expected in about a
century, when the lower type would disappear altogether.

Perhaps the pleasure of being absorbed is not equal to the pleasure of
absorbing, and we cannot say how this proposal will commend itself to the
victims of the euthanasia. The results of miscegenation on this
continent--black with red, and white with black--the results morally,
intellectually, and physically, are not such as to make it attractive to
the American people.

It is not, however, upon sentimental grounds that we oppose this
extension of the exaggerated dogma of equality. Our objection is deeper.
Race distinctions ought to be maintained for the sake of the best
development of the race, and for the continuance of that mutual reaction
and play of peculiar forces between races which promise the highest
development for the whole. It is not for nothing, we may suppose, that
differentiation has gone on in the world; and we doubt that either
benevolence or self-interest requires this age to attempt to restore an
assumed lost uniformity, and fuse the race traits in a tiresome
homogeneity.

Life consists in an exchange of relations, and the more varied the
relations interchanged the higher the life. We want not only different
races, but different civilizations in different parts of the globe.

A much more philosophical view of the African problem and the proper
destiny of the negro race than that of Canon Rawlinson is given by a
recent colored writer,--["Africa and the Africans." By Edmund W. Bly