Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/207

Rh are dull, teſtacles taſteleſs, and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this inveſtigation. We will conſider them here, on the ſame ſtage with the whites, and where the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It will be right to make great allowance for the difference of condition, of education, of converſation, of the ſphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been brought, to and born in America. Moſt of them indeed have been confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own ſociety: yet many have been ſo ſituated, that they might have availed themſelves of the converſation of their maſters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circumſtance have always been aſſociated with the whites. Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and ſciences are cultivated to a conſiderable degree, and have had before their eyes ſamples of the beſt works from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes not deſtitute of deſign and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, ſo as to prove the exiſtence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They aſtoniſh you with ſtrokes of the moſt ſublime oratory; ſuch as prove their reaſon and ſentiment ſtrong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find a black that had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never ſee even an elementary trait of painting or ſculpture. In muſic they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imaginging a ſmall