and sports, and these, unrestrained, will partake of the character of the people and the state of society.  Sometimes the narrow prejudices of bigoted folly will inveigh against these, and insist upon their restraint by law; and these laws, in many of the States, remain upon the statute-book a rebuking evidence of the shameless folly of fanatical ignorance.  Of these, the most conspicuous are the blue-laws of Connecticut, and the more absurd and criminal 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 current of the Anglo-Norman blood which flowed through and fired the hearts of these descendants of the nobility and gentry of Britain.  They were the cavaliers in chivalry and daring, and despised, as their descendants despised, the Roundheads and their descendants, with their cold, dissembling natures, hypocritical in religion as faithless in friendship, without one generous emotion or ennobling sentiment.