the audience. Not another word she said or needed to say; it was enough. It is with a sad feeling that one contemplates noble minds and bodies, nobly and grandly formed human beings, that have come to us cramped, scarred, maimed, out of the prisonhouse of bondage. One longs to know what such beings might have become if suffered to unfold and expand under the kindly developing influences of education. man. It is the theory of some writers that to the African is reserved, in the later and palmier days of the earth, the full and harmonious development of the religious element in The African seems to seize on the tropical fervor and luxuriance of Scripture imagery as something native; he appears to feel himself to be of the same blood with those old burning, simple souls, the patriarchs, prophets, and seers, whose impassioned words seem only grafted as foreign plants on the cooler stock of the Occidental mind. I cannot but think that Sojourner, with the same culture, might have spoken words as eloquent and undying as those of the African Saint Augustine or Tertullian. How grand and queenly a woman she might have been, with her wonderful physical vigor, her great heaving sea of emotion, her power of spiritual conception, her quick penetration, and her boundless energy! We might conceive an African type of woman so largely made and moulded, so much fuller in all the elements of life, physical and spiritual, that the dark hue of the skin should seem only to add an appropriate charm, as Milton says of his Penseroso, whom he imagines "Black, but such as in esteem But though Sojourner Truth has passed away from among us as a wave of the sea, her memory still lives in one of the loftiest and most original works of modern art, the Libyan Sibyl, by Mr. Story, which attracted so much attention in the late World's Exhibition. Some years ago, when visiting Rome, I related Sojourner's history to Mr. Story at a breakfast at his house. Already had his mind begun to turn to Egypt in search of a type of art which should represent a larger and more vigorous development of nature than the cold elegance of Greek lines. His glorious Cleopatra was then in process of evolution, and his mind was working out the problem of her broadly developed nature, of all that slumbering weight and fullness of passion with which this statue seems charged, as a heavy thundercloud is charged with electricity. The history of Sojourner Truth worked in his mind and. led him into the deeper recesses of the African nature, those unexplored depths of being and feeling, mighty and dark as the gigantic depths of tropical forests, mysterious as the hidden rivers and mines of that burning continent whose life-history is yet to be. A few days after, he told me that he had conceived the idea of a statue which he should call the Libyan Sibyl. Two years subsequently, I revisited Rome, and found the gorgeous Cleopatra finished, a thing to marvel at, as the creation of a new style of beauty, a new manner of art. Mr. Story requested me to come and repeat to him the history of Sojourner Truth, saying that the conception had never left him. I did so; and a day or two after, he showed me the clay model of the Libyan Sibyl. I have never seen the marble statue, but am told by those who have that it was by far the most impressive work of art at the Exhibition. A notice of the two statues from the London "Athenæum must supply a description which I cannot give : The Cleopatra and the Sibyl are seated, partly draped with the characteristic Egyptian gown, that gathers about the torso and falls freely around the limbs; the first is covered to the bosom, the second bare to the hips. Queenly Cleopatra rests back against her chair in meditative ease, leaning her cheek against one hand, whose elbow the rail of the seat sustains; the other is outstretched upon her knee, nipping its forefinger upon the thumb thoughtfully, as though some firm, willful purpose filled her brain, as it seems to set those luxurious features to a smile as if the whole woman'would.' Upon her head is the coif, bearing in front the mystic uræus, or twining basilisk of sovereignty, while from its sides depend the wide Egyptian lapels, or wings, that fall upon the shoulders. The Sibilla Libica has crossed her knees, an action universally held amongst the ancients as indicative of reticence or secrecy, and of power to bind. A secret-keeping looking dame she is, in the full-bloom proportions of ripe womanhood, wherein choosing to place his figure the sculptor has deftly gone between the disputed point whether these women were blooming and wise in youth, or deeply furrowed with age and burdened with the knowledge of centuries, as Virgil, Livy, and Gellius say. Good artistic example might be quoted on both sides. Her forward elbow is propped upon one knee; and to keep her secrets closer, for this Libyan woman is the closest of all the Sibyls, she rests her shut mouth upon one closed palm, as if holding the African mystery deep in the brooding brain that looks out through mournful, warning eyes, seen under the wide shade of the strange horned (ammonite) crest, that bears the mystery of the Tetragrammaton upon its upturned front. Over her full bosom, mother of myriads as she was, hangs the same symbol. Her face has a Nubian cast, her hair wavy and plaited, as is meet. We hope to see the day when copies both of the Cleopatra and the Libyan Sibyl shall adorn the Capitol at Washington. LIFE IN FLORIDA AFTER THE WAR OUR FLORIDA PLANTATION Ir was a hazy, dreamy, sultry February day, such as comes down from the skies of Florida in the opening of spring. A faint scent of orange-blossoms was in the air, though as yet there seemed to be only white buds on the trees. The deciduous forests along the banks of the broad St. John's were just showing that misty dimness which announces the opening of young buds. The river lay calm as a mirror, streaked here and there with broad bands of intenser blue, which melted dreamily into purplish mists in the distance. Late in the afternoon a tiny sail-boat might have been seen lying in almost immovable stillness in the middle of the river. She was a picturesque object enough, with her white sail reflected far down in the blue mirror; but it was no sport to the party on board to find themselves becalmed there, with the sun sinking westward, and the shore where they were to spend the night full three miles away. That sail-boat contained us and our furniture and belongings, just going to take up our abode upon "our plantation." The history of our plantation so far had been briefly this: the year of the closing of our war, two captains of the Union army, who had been serving in Florida, had conceived the bright idea of hiring a plantation and making their fortunes in raising cotton. The process of reasoning was very simple: cotton is the one thing sure always to be wanted in the world; Florida is the country which can grow the best long-staple cotton; and here is a plantation which |