scriptions of the beauty of the country and its abundant resources, and of the shrewd, amiable, and generous character of the inhabitants. He draws also the same comparison between the Japanese and their neighbors in China, that every one who enters the one country from the other seems compelled to draw,—a comparison most favorable to the former. He seems to have been, all the time of his visit, in a state of delighted wonder at what he saw, and to have left it and set his face again towards China and its dirt, its dead civilization, its false and contemptuous diplomacy, with great reluctance. His testimony, although it is based on very limited experience and observation, is very valuable and, confirmed as it is by the voice of all other travelers, very conclusive as to the high character and civilization of the Japanese nation. What we wish to take exception to, and what deserves to be rebuked in Mr. Oliphant's book, is rather what he says impliedly and what he omits to say. One would think, to read the two hundred pages in which the events of Lord Elgin's three weeks in Japan are recorded, that little of importance had been accomplished there, in behalf of foreign nations, until his irresistible diplomacy broke down all barriers and opened wide the doors of the empire to the outer world. "We passed on at full speed up to the bay," says Mr. Oliphant, speaking of Lord Elgin's refusal to anchor at Kanagawa, the usual anchorage for ships at Yedo, fifteen miles below the city,—“where no western ship had been before." But, four years before this, Commodore Perry in the "Mississippi," had advanced beyond the southern suburb of the capital, and both that steamer and the "Powhattan" had gone as near to Yedo as the depth of water would allow.* So again, Mr. Oliphant, speaking of Lord Elgin's landing at Yedo, declares that the boat procession from the "Furious," "along the shore about three miles," was "such a spectacle as Japanese eyes had never before witnessed;" whereas, on more than one occasion, in this very bay of Yedo, Perry had landed with much more parade and under circumstances far more strange and impressive. Again says Mr. Oliphant, "there was some discussion as to the salute which should be fired by the Japanese, they having never, upon any previous occasion, saluted a foreign flag." But Mr. Harris, the American Consul General at Simoda, declares that on both the "Fourths of July" that he had spent in Japan," and once upon Washington's birth day, they fired a salute of twenty-one guns with howitzers," made after the pattern of those which *See Perry's Report, Vol. I, pp. 398-9. Perry had presented them. "Mr. Heuskin and myself attended, with the American flag flying, and the people exhibited the greatest good feeling and enthusiasm."* These are points of small importance, perhaps, but they are specimens of the spirit in which all this part of Mr. Oliphant's book is written. The facts in the case are that Lord Elgin in his visit to Japan did little more than secure to his own countrymen the benefits which Commodore Perry and Mr. Harris had already secured for the Americans; and that he would have been unable even to accomplish anything, had it not been for what these gentlemen had first accomplished. We have been at some pains to compare the English treaty with Mr. Harris's of a month previous. It is almost word for word the same, and it would have followed almost as a matter of course, upon the American treaty, without any necessity for an especially resolute and inflexible attitude on the part of Lord Elgin. Added to all this is the fact that Lord Elgin was wholly without an interpreter and that the services of Mr. Heuskin, Mr. Harris's Secretary, were invaluable to him. It would have been in better taste, to say the least, had Mr. Oliphant assumed a less exalted tone in his narrative of this part of Lord Elgin's mission, and had he done more than occasionally and grudgingly to refer to Mr. Harris's presence in Japan and to his great diplomatic successes before Lord Elgin's arrival. Possibly Mr. Oliphant would reply to us in the spirit of an ill-natured article which appeared in the London Times, when the news of Lord Elgin's treaty reached England. That article insinuated that the concessions which Mr. Harris had obtained from the government at Yedo were obtained only in view of the intelligence which had just before arrived concerning the success of the engagement at the mouth of the Peiho; and that it was only by ungenerous trickery on the part of the Americans that they were the first to reap the benefits of this Chinese Mr. Oliphant, though he has the courtesy to refrain from saying so, evidently thinks as the Times thought. But such an intimation as this is grossly incorrect. Long before Lord Elgin entered the Japanese waters Mr. Harris had begun the work which was consummated by the treaty of Yedo. We know whereof we affirm when we say that the liberal attitude which Japan now holds toward the western world is owing more to him than to any other living man. It is he who, by his wise, firm but always conciliatory policy, and particularly by his influence and example as an upright Christian gentleman, has made prac news. * See Lt. Habersham's letters to the Philadelphia "Ledger," 1858. tically valuable the results which Perry achieved by an armed squadron, -disarming the suspicion of a people who had for two centuries hated all foreigners,-winning their confidence,-gaining their warm, personal affection. A year before Lord Elgin came, he had secured some of the most important of the privileges afterwards embodied in the treaty of Yedo. Before any of the news from China had been received, he had been twice to the capital; had lived there for a month; had been treated with profound respect and with a careful and almost affectionate attention by every one; and had been received to an audience by the Tycoon, without any of the humiliating ceremonies previously required of the Dutch, and in a manner wholly worthy of his dignity as a man and as the representative of a great and friendly power. Thus was the way made ready for the signing of the treaty; so that when Mr. Harris went for the third time to Yedo in the "Powhattan" there remained little to be done except the drawing up of the document and its signature by the commissioners. It required only three days for Mr. Harris to go from Simoda to Yedo, make his treaty and return again to his consulate. If any one will assert, in view of these facts, that the treaty at Yedo was extorted by the effect upon the Japanese government, of the news of the Chinese war and of the British successes at the Peiho, that, in short, the Americans only stole what was properly the thunder of the English guns, we can only wish him much joy of his assertion. We should not have dwelt at so much length upon these errors of Mr. Oliphant's book, if we had not regarded the spirit in which he writes as one that is more or less general among his countrymen. Indeed we shall not greatly err, if we regard such a disposition to ignore all that has been done by others than themselves in discovery, in science, in general progress, as peculiarly and characteristically English. In this particular case it is especially to be condemned, for it tends to take from Mr. Harris the credit for successful diplomacy to which he is singularly entitled, by his patient, upright, and sagacious labors in Japan. THE WEST COAST OF AFRICA.*-In the present aspect of American affairs, with the "negro" uppermost in all the great questions of the day, a book that touches upon the negro's "fatherland," and throws * Adventures and Observations on the West Coast of Africa, and its Islands. By Rev. CHARLES W. THOMAS, M. A., member of the Georgia Conference, Chaplain of the African Squadron in 1855, 1856 and 1857. Illustrated. New York: Derby & Jackson. 1860. 12mo. pp. 479. light upon the character and condition of the black race at home, and upon the efforts making to stay the traffic in human flesh, and to colonize and Christianize the sons of Africa on African soil, will be received and read with interest. The scope and character of the work before us, are fully indicated by its title. The chapters which compose it were prepared originally for the "Southern Christian Advocate," at the request of the Georgia Methodist Conference, of which the author is a member. Besides a narrative of personal observations, at various points on the African coast and islands, he has condensed from various sources a large amount of historical, statistical, and other information respecting the regions visited, and also given us his views on various questions of interest respecting the colored race. The book is well written, interesting throughout, and, in the main, we doubt not, trustworthy. The reader, however, will often be reminded, in its perusal, that the writer is a Southern man, and that however conscientiously inclined to observe and judge impartially, he has not always been able to free himself from Southern prejudices. The book is, in fact, a "Southside" view of Africa and the Africans, but is all the more interesting on this account, and the more valuable, also, when its facts or testimonies are such as would be suspected, if they came from a "Northern abolitionist." As a specimen of the Southern light in which he is apt to look at objects, we may cite a passage in which he refers to Mrs. Stowe. He represents an eloquent colored Methodist preacher, whom he heard in Sierra Leone, as contrasting the condition of his audience with that of their race in America, "where," said the preacher, "they live on roots, and do the work of brute beasts." "After service," says our author, “I introduced myself, as a southern Methodist, to the preacher, and enjoyed half an hour's chat with him at the mission house, where I intimated that his description of the condition of the colored race in the United States was new to me. Imagine my surprise when the gentleman quoted from the Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and asked me if I did not admire Mrs. Stowe. I replied that as a writer, I admired her; and that the most ardent admirers of her intellect were Southern men,' "How is that, sir?' "Why, out of the South she is complimented in that she possesses an imagination which can form a beautiful and attractive story out of a few plain characters, acts of cruelty and pictures of suffering. In the South, we know that not only did her imagination supply the dressing and paint, but even the characters and the so called 'facts,' and that, therefore, as a creative genius, which is the highest order of genius, we consider her gigantic-but alas! for her veracity.' "Thus is abolitionism doing its accursed work; spreading, even in Africa, the venom of falsehood, and engendering strife." pp. 81, 82. Occasional instances of this sort of prejudice very much detract from the general fairness and excellence of the book. At the same time, we must do the author the justice to say, that, while he has a strong antipathy to "Northern abolitionists," he shows little sympathy with the "fire-eaters" and disunionists of the South, or with their radical views respecting slavery and the slave trade. His sketches, historical and descriptive, of Sierra Leone and Liberia, are both interesting and instructive, and, as a general thing, his views respecting the condition of these settlements and the results of missionary labor in them, appear to be discriminating and just. It is to be noticed that he everywhere gives the negro (whether colonized from America or native) credit for a degree of intellect and capacity to take care of himself, entirely at variance with the theories of negro inferiority, of late so current among Southern philosophers. The government officials of Liberia, her senators and representatives, he describes as, many of them, men of talents, eloquence and sound judgment. Certainly, in point of dignity, capacity, good sense, and integrity, they would compare favorably, in these days, with those of the "model republic" after which their own is fashioned. President Benson, a pure black, is a "public functionary" who does no discredit to his color, nor would he to any color. His very blackness gained him votes, when a candidate for the presidency; the question of the relative merits of the two races, and of the natural capabilities of the black, having entered, to some extent, into the national politics, as the following anecdote will show. An American gentleman, Captain W., meeting, just before election, an intelligent colored man whom he had known in Virginia as a slave, under the name of "Buck," but who in Liberia bore the title of "Colonel " Brown, asked him, after some other conversation, “Which of the candidates for the Presidency are you going to vote for ?' "Oh, Benson, sir!' "Has not Roberts made you a good President?' "Oh, yes.' "He is a very smart man,' continued the captain, and much respected abroad. I think you had better vote for him.' "That's all true !'-Colonel becomes quite animated-But the fac's just this, Mass Whit': the folks say as how we darkies ain't fitten to take care o' |