nal laws of Massachusetts against amusements not
only necessary, but healthful and innocent. Even in the present
advanced state of knowledge and civilization, do we occasionally hear
ranted from the pulpit denunciations of dancing, as a sinful and
God-offending amusement. Such men should not be permitted to teach or
preach--it is to attenuate folly and fanaticism, to circumscribe the
happiness of youth, and belie the Bible.

The emigrants to Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia were all persons of
like character, combining a mixture of English, Irish, and Scotch
blood. They were enterprising, daring, and remarkable for great good
sense. Rude from the want of education and association with a more
polished people, they were nevertheless high-principled and full of
that chivalrous spirit which prompts a natural courtesy, courts danger,
and scorns the little and mean--open-handed in their generosity, and
eminently candid and honest in all their intercourse and dealings with
their fellow-men. These elements, collected from various sections,
combined to form new communities in the wild and untamed regions. In
their conflicts with the savages were shown a daring fearlessness and a
high order of military talent in very many of the prominent leaders of
the different settlements. They had no chronicler to note and record
their exploits, and they exist now only in the traditions of the
country.

The names of Shelby and Kenton, of Kentucky; of Davidson and Jackson,
of Tennessee; of Clarke, Mathews, and Adams, of Georgia; Dale, of
Alabama, and Claiborne, of Mississippi, live in the memory of the
people of their States, together with those of Tipton, Sevier, Logan,
and Boone, and will be in the future history of these States, with
their deeds recorded as those whose enterprise, energy, and
fearlessness won from the wilderness and the savage their fertile and
delightful lands, to be a home and a country for their posterity.

The children of such spirits intermarrying, could but produce men of
talent and enterprise, and women of beauty, intelligence, and virtue.
In the veins of these ran only streams of blue blood--such as filled
the veins of the leaders of the Crusades--such as warmed the hearts of
the O'Neals and O'Connors, of Wallace and Bruce, and animated the
bosoms of the old feudal barons of England, who extorted the great
charter of human liberty from King John. There was no mixture of the
pale Saxon to taint or dilute the noble