and power of self -government, and political
capacity of the negro would never have been
obtained had there been no slavery in the United
States for good men to war against, and* noble
women to refuse all participation in its gain.
Had there been no slavery, there would have
been no negro education, and Dahomey and
Ashantee would still have been the last result
possible to African civilisation. As it is, we
have seen what a black community managed by
a black president (the first governors were
whites; lately, since 1841, they have been
negroes), officered by negroes, legislated for by
negro lawyers, and peopled by men who but
a few years ago were mere slaves in the
plantations, working in fear of the lash, and under
the power of an irresponsible authority—we
have seen what such a community can do,
left to itself, and in the possession of liberty.
The lesson, if painfully taught, has been nobly
learnt, and the success of the small colony of
Liberia is one of the most convincing arguments
that can be given, of the capacity of the negro
for self-government, and of his right to a free
man's heritage of political liberty and social
equality.

* John McDonough, Miss Margaret Mercer, Mrs.
Reed, and Miss Mattie Griffith, emancipated their
slaves, and sent them out, free of all expense, to
their best home—Liberia.

SHEEP-WASHING.

The great annual sheep-washing at Chicklebury
commences about the middle of May. I
do not think the Downshire shepherds study
the almanack very much, nor have much trust in
Zadkiel, so I suppose they discover the proper
time for the sheep-washing by such signs as the
falling off of apple blossom, or the appearance of
young birds in the hedges: much as they know
when grass is ripe by its brown lustre, and by the
floating up to its surface of those great white
stars—the Cow daisies: much as they know
the proper time of perch being in season by the
opening of the elder-leaf.

There is a pretty simplicity in this ignoring
of book-learning, and I would not disturb the
innocence of these Downshire shepherds for all
the solar systems "the small, but active
brain" of our village schoolmaster could knock
into their grizzled heads, after twenty years'
hard labour. Let us hope that for generations
to come our shepherds, learned in their country
learning—but, as to books, children, may
continue to date the events of their lives from such
simple epochs as "last hay harvest:" let them
remember that son Tom was married "twenty
years agone last turmot sowing," or that
"Fayther died five year come next Chicklebury
fair."

A sheep-washing in a lowland county is not
a great festival; there is a splash in a corner, a
fuss at some pond, some shouting and some
beer-tippling, and there an end. But, to see
sheep-washing in its culminating glory, to see it
as an institution, as a national ceremony, it must
be seen in a real sheep-feeding county, in fact,
in Downshire and nowhere else.

To have a true festival there must be some
great reaction. The Olympic games were of
national importance, because they brought holiday
amusement and society to the busy youth
of a thinly-peopled country. The Derby day
is a true carnival, because it is the outvent
of a whole year of London labour. The Saturnalia
was noisy, because it gave to slaves three
days of liberty and licence. The Carnival is
tumultuous and maddened because it gives to
the Italians, who are priest-bound, a week of
freedom. And to creep back to our very narrow
slip of turf, the Downshire sheep-washing is a
great time, because it brings together our
shepherds in a pleasant, rejoicing, though hard-
working way, and puts some money into their
pockets.

The Downshire shepherd's life is a hard and
solitary one. Let me briefly sketch it. He
wrenches himself from his poor but warm bed
at daybreak, and leads forth his flock of, say a
thousand bleating sheep; and, with tinkling bells
that rouse the lark from his nest in the clover,
betakes him, with his prelendedly ferocious dog,
to the high downs. There, if the day be
wet, he crouches under a hedge in his old
grey great-coat, and plays with his dog,
wrapt in dreams of a warm fire and a hot
supper with Sally and the children at night.
If it be fine, he seats himself on a green turf-
padded molehill, in a Robinson Crusoe sort
of royalty, and watches over his flock, who
sprinkle the down with spots of dull white for
half a mile on either side. There, the swallows
skim and sweep so near him, that he can see the
glossy indigo blue of their backs, or the doleful
plovers swirl round him, flickering white, uttering
their strange regretful cries. He searches along
the edge of the gilded furze for where the mushroom
buttons bulb above the ground, watches
the wheat-ear flit from mound to mound, or feels
some dim pleasure when the lark rises quivering
up above him, and flutters down its simple
music.

There are (forgive the truism) three hundred
and sixty-five days in most years, and in this wild
solitary life do these days pass. Now and then
that witch-like personage, the wool-gatherer,
with her head bound up anti-rheumatically, and
her apron full of the locks of wool she has
gathered from the furze-tufts and the
thornbushes, comes wandering by him, and stops for
a moment to crack some nuts of country news.
Now and then a rival shepherd, like a patriarch
of old, arrives from some distance down, moving
towards him with his flocks, and holds a royal
conference with him on the state of the weather.
After that short meeting, the silence and the
dead monotony of the shepherd life must appear
to be all the deeper. The singing of larks, the
wild cry of plovers, are all very well for poets'
diet, but they are scarcely substantial food for a
long life—especially when the memory is dull,
the perception not vivid, the intelligence not