In the afternoon I went to see the school of the coloured children in Cincinnati.  This was established about four years ago by a Mr. Gilmore, a white gentleman, who is also a minister of the Gospel.  He is a man of some property, and all connected with this school has been done at his own risk and responsibility.  On my venturing to inquire what sacrifice of property he had made in the undertaking, he seemed hurt at the question, and replied, “No sacrifice whatever, sir.”  “But what, may I ask, have these operations cost beyond what you have received in the way of school-fees?” I continued.  “About 7,000 dollars,” (1,500_l._) said he.  Including two or three branches, there are about 300 coloured children thus educated.  Mr. Gilmore was at first much opposed and ridiculed; but that state of feeling was beginning to wear away.  Several of the children were so fair that, accustomed as I am to shades of colour, I could not distinguish them from the Anglo-Saxon race; and yet Mr. Gilmore told me even they would not have been admitted to the other public schools!  How discerning the Americans are!  How proud of their skin-deep aristocracy!  And the author of “Cincinnati in 1841,” in speaking of those very schools from which these fair children were excluded, says, “These schools are founded not merely on the principle that all men are free and equal, but that all men’s children are so likewise; and that, as it is our duty to love our neighbour as ourselves, it is our duty to provide the same benefits and blessings to his children as to our own.  These establishments result from the recognition of the fact also, that we have all a common interest—­moral, political, and pecuniary—­in the education of the whole community.”  Those gloriously exclusive schools I had no wish to visit.  But I felt a peculiar pleasure in visiting this humbler yet well-conducted institution, for the benefit of those who are despised and degraded on account of their colour.  As I entered, a music-master was teaching them, with the aid of a piano, to sing some select pieces for an approaching examination, both the instrument and the master having been provided by the generous Gilmore.  Even the music-master, notwithstanding his first-rate ability, suffers considerable loss of patronage on account of his services in this branded school.  Among the pieces sung, and sung exceedingly well, was the following touching appeal, headed “The Fugitive Slave to the Christian”—­Air, “Cracovienne.”

“The fetters galled my weary soul,—­
  A soul that seemed but thrown away: 
I spurned the tyrant’s base control,
  Resolved at last the man to play: 
    The hounds are haying on my track;
    O Christian! will you send me back?

“I felt the stripes,—­the lash I saw,
  Red dripping with a father’s gore;
And, worst of all their lawless law,
  The insults that my mother bore! 
    The hounds are baying on my track;
    O Christian! will you send me back?