d beasts, the
yell of Indians, and the sharp crack of the murderous rifles in the
hands of robbers.

Our space will not permit our giving much of this fascinating volume.
The author seeks to rescue John Sevier from an undeserved oblivion. At
the same time he relegates that historic myth Daniel Boone to his
deserved contempt as a land-shark and speculator. It is a great comfort
to find a man of genius and a student withal going through these sham
gods of the past, and puncturing their bran-stuffed bodies until they
collapse into insignificance. What a task some iconoclast of the future
will have among our war heroes of the late armed conflict! How the great
generals whose fame, like kites, has been made of newspapers, will
tumble from their pedestals, while the real heroes are lifted into
place!

We give space to give one extract not only as an example of our author's
style, but for the facts he narrates. Speaking of the early Methodist
Church of Tennessee and its pioneer preachers, he says:

"His manners were not polished, but they were far from rude. They
were simple and sincere, and were filled with a real sympathy and
warmed the hearts of his associates. He was plain of speech,
however, though if he wounded the vanity of his hearers he never
wounded their sensibilities. These were his chief limitations: he
was narrow, sectional, and bigoted, unpolished, beyond the grasp of
any but Christian fellowship, taking a hard, austere, and almost
terrible view of the world as it is, having real sympathy alone
with the world as it should be or as he would make it. Religion to
him was the goal of existence; all other interests were greater or
less temptations that drew away from the path of that goal.... It
is not a figure of speech to say that his path was beset with
death, and that for months at a time the penances of a Trappist
monastery were but as luxuries as compared to the daily trials of
hunger and thirst and sleeplessness which fell to his lot. He would
ride for days at a time, through any inclemency of weather, through
any degree of heat or cold, to keep an appointment to preach the
Word to those who hungered for the Lord. The last rain perhaps had
swept a bridge away. A tribe of hostile Indians were prowling
through the forests which he would have to penetrate. A heavy fall
of snow had obscured the trail that le