of conscience by promising them all the delights and exaltations of our civilization in return. How ill we perform our part of the bargain, history can tell. They did not ask for bread, but we promised it, and then we gave them stones. Though not fascinated by our fruit of knowledge, we gave them some, and it proved to their taste but the apple of Sodom, with its ashes, that filled them with pain and disgust. The learned Austrian savan, Dr. Hochstetter, gave utterance to a sad experience when he wrote: "Despite the many advantages it has brought to the Natives, the European civilization and colonization acts upon them, after all, like an insidious poison, consuming the inmost marrow of their life." Mr. Consul Pritchard contends that, "just as the white man and the influences which accompany him intrude upon the home of the Pacific Islanders, so the latter, accepting the habits of the former, gradually but too surely wane."
There must indeed be something terribly wrong in our teaching, or faulty in our principles. Civilization indicates advancement, and has with it associated all that can enhance the happiness, purify the nature, and elevate the being of man. But much of that which is extolled is too often of a pseudo character; else, why is it that, at the present epoch of our national progress, so many authors lament the curses of our refinement? One has said, "Whatever civilization has done, it has not, to all appearance, materially diminished the sum of human misery and crime. Is all civilization, then, but a vicious circle, and our efforts, from century to century, but the oscillations of a pendulum?—Is it only a change of form in man and in states, not an essential change of nature or condition?" At any rate, we may say with Sir John Lubbock, "In reality we are but on the threshold of civilization."
To expect, therefore, from barbarians raised to civilization, a great exhibition of the virtues, and a considerable accession of enjoyment, may be hoping for that which we cannot observe among our own selves. They wear our clothes, and lose their grace and health. They eat our food, and suffer indigestion and idleness. They learn our language, and assimilate our vices.
May it not be that the very great contrast between our state and theirs strikes them with awe, and appals them by its magnitude? Might we not more wisely, and more successfully,
