t on; the expression of his
features, variant as April weather, but always intellectual, they
invited approach, and the fascination of his conversation chained to
his presence all who approached him. In fine, he was a type in manner
and character of the people among whom he was born and reared; and I
scarcely know if this is the greater compliment to him or them.

With few exceptions, this peculiar population of Middle Georgia has
furnished all of her distinguished sons, and to the traits which make
them remarkable is she to-day mainly indebted for her exalted
prominence among her sister States of the South. The peculiar training
of her sons, the practical education and social equality which
pervades, and ever has, her society, acquaints every one with the
wants of every other; at the same time it affords the facility for
union in any public enterprise which promises the public good. All
alike are infused with the same State pride, and the equality of
fortunes prevents the obtrusion of arrogant wealth, demanding control,
from purely selfish motives, in any public measure.

This community of interests superinduces unity of feeling, and unity
of action; and the same homogeneous education secures a healthy public
opinion, which, at last, is the great controlling law of human action.
Thus the soil is one, the cultivation is one, the growth is one, and
the fruit is the same. Nowhere in the South have these been so
prominent as in Middle Georgia, and no other portion of the South is
so distinguished for progress, talent, and high moral cultivation.
There is, perhaps, wanting that polish of manners, that ease and grace
of movement, and that quiet delicacy of suppressed emotion, so
peculiar to her citizens of the seaboard, which the world calls
refinement; which seems taught to conceal the natural under the
artistic, and which so frequently refines away the nobler and more
generous emotions of the heart. I doubt, however, if the habit of open
and unrestrained expression of the feelings of our nature is not a
more enduring basis of strong character and vigorous thought and
action, than the cold polish of refined society. Whatever is most
natural is most enduring. The person unrestrained by dress grows into
noble and beautiful proportions; the muscles uncramped, develop not
only into beauty, but strength and healthfulness. So with the mind
untrammelled by forms and ceremonies; and so with the soul unfettered
by the superstition