chapter xvi. tom’s mistress and her opinions if ever africa shall show an elevated and cultivated race,——and come it must, some time, her turn to figure in the drama of human improvement,——life will awake here with a gorgeousness and splendor of which our cold western tribes faintly have conceived. in that far-off mystic land of gold, and gems, and spices, and waving palms, and wondrous flowers, and miraculous fertility, will awake new forms of art, new styles of splendor and the negro race, and no longer despised and trodden down, will perhaps, show forth some of the latest and most magnificent revelations of human life. certainly they will, in their gentleness, their lowly docility of heart, their aptitude to repose on a superior mind and rest on a higher power, their childlike simpicity of affection, and facility of forgiveness. in all these they will exhibit the highest form of the peculiarly christian life, and, perhaps, god chansteneth whom he loveth, he has chosen poor africa in the furnace of affliction, to make her the highest and noblest in that kingdom which he will set up, when every other kingdom has been tried, and failed for the first shall be last, and the last first. 脫此阿非利加黑種之人，能產一奇杰之男子，則其文明進步，誠于世界大有關系。況其地所產，均金鉆寶石，富甲諸洲。設彼能自振作，將來成一繁華都會，正非泰西人所能夢見，較諸今日服人鞭策之下，豈不亦為世界上最高等之人？矧黑人性質，有過絕于人者，脫令夜黑路歧俯仰失措之際，勿論款何黑人之扉，均以禮延接。以此推之，異日世界大同之會，起點必自此種人矣！