have divorced us from the pursuits which give nobleness and grandeur to life. In our time of trials we have shown, it is true, a matchless patience, and a quenchless hope: the one prophetic of victory, and the other the germ of a high Christian character, now developing. These better qualities, however, have been disproportioned, and the life of the race, in general, has been alien from ennobling and aspiring effort.
But the days of passivity should now come to an end. The active, creative, and saving powers of the race should begin to show themselves. The power of the negro, if he has such power, to tell upon human interests, and to help shape human destinies, should, at an early day, make full demonstration of itself. We owe it to ourselves, to our race, and to our generous defenders and benefactors, both in Europe and America, to show that we are capable "of receiving the seed of present history into a kindly yet a vigorous soil, and [that we can] reproduce it, the same, and yet new, for a future period"[1] in all the homes of this traduced yet vital and progressive race.
Surely the work herein suggested is fitted to just such ends, and is fully worthy the noblest faculties and the highest ambition. If I were aiming but to startle the fancy, to kindle the imagination, and thereby to incite to brave and gallant deeds, I know no theme equal to this in interest and commanding influence. And just this is the influence it is now exerting upon passionate and romantic minds, in England and the United States, in France and Germany, in
- ↑ Dr. Arnold. Inaugural Lecture.
