ADDRESS.
Three hundred years of misery have made West Africa the synonyme of every thing painful and horrible. So generally, nay, so universally, has this been the case, that it is difficult for us to connect ideas grateful and gracious "with even any part of that continent. It seems to have an enstampect character which cannot admit of mitigating lights or relieving shades. Fact, and incident, and memory, and imagination, all serve but to breed suggestions that are distressful and agonizing.
The principle of association, moreover, is so tenacious and persistent a faculty that it is almost impossible, at times, to turn it from the channels in which it has been wont to flow, for generations or for ages. And the story of anguish, and rapine, and murder, which is the story of Africa for 300 years,—which has been so prolonged that it has seemed to be destiny; which has been so aggravated and intense that it has seemed to be organic,—it seems almost impossible
