nt a fit subject
for the experiment, which has nowhere yet been adequately tried, of
developing latent capacities for progress in races that have raised
themselves above the level of absolute savagery without attaining to
those ideals which, never wholly realized, are essential to continuous
improvement. It has been found easy to enslave, to debase, to
exterminate races in this condition, while the ill success of efforts to
enlighten and elevate them has led to the inference that this is
impracticable. The trial, however, will not have been made till the
counteracting influences have ceased to act, or at least to predominate,
and time has been allowed for hidden forces that may possibly exist to
be called into play. As Mr. Stanley observes, "It is out of the
fragments of warring myriads that the present polished nations of Europe
have sprung. Had a few of those waves of races flowing and eddying over
Northern Africa succeeded in leaping the barrier of the equator, we
should have found the black aboriginal races of Southern Africa very
different from the savages we meet to-day."

It was the spirit in which Mr. Stanley labored--the ardor and
hopefulness, the unfailing patience and good temper, with which he
applied himself to the task of cultivating the good will and securing
the co-operation of the natives--that made his enterprise a success.
With some exceptions, for which he gives ample credit, his European
subordinates seem to have been a constant source of embarrassment.
Possibly there may have been on his own part a lack of that
administrative ability which, acquired through discipline, imparts the
skill and power to enforce it. At all events, it is the sympathy and
humor with which he portrays his innumerable "blood-brothers"--greedy,
cunning, and capricious, but untainted with ferocity, and consequently
manageable, like children, by a judicious blending of severity and
indulgence--that give interest and charm to his narrative. It has many
faults and deficiencies which in a work of greater literary pretensions
would be inexcusable. The grammatical blunders with which it abounds
are the least annoying, since their grossness makes it easy for the
reader to supply mentally the needed correction without effort or
consideration. Looseness of diction, repetitions and redundancies of all
kinds, and, above all, a frequent lack of clearness and vividness both
in statement and description, are more serious impediments to the