govern them, in adopting some rule for their own preservation. Severe and cruel as those laws may have been, they were yet preferable to none at all;

and thither he removed that year with his children and followers, to each of whom the Spanish Government granted 600 acres of land. He settled down for life on this grant, surrounded by a numerous family, and a large company of admiring followers. He continued his favourite sport of hunting, and trapping bears, until the year 1824, when in the month of September, as he was taking aim at a bear, he fell over and expired, being then in the eighty-fifth year of his age.

He died near the old Charette village, in what is now Warren county, Missouri, and was buried about a mile from the town of Matthasville. His wife, the first white woman who entered Kentucky, is buried by his side. Several of the old settlers of Missouri are buried at the same spot, and the grave-yard has grown over with a thicket of briars several feet high, and almost impenetrable. The traveller passes by the spot, and never knows that there lies buried one of the most wonderful men that has existed in the United States. For many years there was not even a tombstone to mark the grave; but a few years ago a very aged settler of St. Clark's county, named Jonathan Bryan, with his own hands cut out a rough tombstone, about two feet high, and placed it at the head of the grave of Daniel Boone, and that is the only monument that has ever been erected to his memory. Happily for the reputation of the country, a better spirit prevails, and the people of Missouri are now about to raise a suitable monument over the grave of Daniel Boone and his wife.

The memory of Boone is otherwise preserved, by a sculptured piece as large as life, in the rotunda of the United States Capitol, at Washington, being one of four, designed to commemorate the aboriginal character, and some of the prominent events in the early history of the country. The scene of the device is laid in 1773, and is made to represent a fearful contest between Daniel Boone, and an Indian Chief.

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and perhaps necessary in the turbulent and chaotic state in which society was placed in those remote districts, where might alone gave right, and the weak became the early victims of the powerful, and the many. But our modern Lynch law code is of a very different cast; called into use for very opposite purposes, and generally enforced in those parts of the republic, where the constituted laws of the country, until these repeated evidences of their utter insufficiency, were held to be supreme: even the mockery of a trial is now dispensed with, and what was once perhaps assumed to be a precautionary, though severe measure of self-defence, has of late years been distinguished as the sanguinary, and penal retribution of mob vengeance-the sudden and unrestrained outbreak of violence, and crime, disturbing the foundations of all social order-disgracing the age in which we live, and stamping reproach upon the nation, where such excesses are for a moment tolerated, or permitted to exist.

The fiend-like character of these ebullitions-the sudden vents of popular violence, is the same in the north as in the south, in the eastern as in the western districts; its aim equally confined to the destruction of private property and human life, attendant with a degree of savage barbarity, scarcely reconcilable with the darker ages from which we have escaped. The mind sickens at the contemplation, and turns with loathing from the dark and fearful catalogue, which even the few last years present.

It is far beyond the limit of our inquiry, to

wander into these details, or dwell upon the incidents that daily occur, under the direction of these selfconstituted tribunals, beyond what is necessary to afford the reader a correct illustration of their half savage and demoralizing character, and latent influence on American society. Even in the New England states, generally proverbial in the conduct of their citizens, their love of order, and quiet observance of the decencies of life-mixed up, it is true, with a certain portion of illiberality and religious fanaticism, these excesses have of late years shewn themselves; demonstrative of a yet crude and unsettled state of society, even in these parts, characterised by a cool and deliberate resolve, that bodes no immediate return to the observances of peace and social order, or that obedience to the established laws, so necessary to their due and proper enforcement.

The recent plunder and burning of the Catholic Ursuline convent at Charleston, within about a mile of the city of Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, was precisely of this cast-distinguished by features of the deepest enormity. It had pleased several of the modern peace-preservers of this district to insist, in opposition to asserted facts, that a religious of this convent had been continued an inmate of the establishment against her will, and notwithstanding her own repeated and positive assurance to the contrary. After due deliberation, these men determined, under this assumed pretext, to sack and burn the establishment to the ground. The public authorities of the town, as also of the city of Boston adjoining, were

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fully apprized of the intention, for at least a week before the movement took place; but, unwilling we suppose, to place themselves in opposition to the popular will when expressed after this fashion, took no precautionary steps to prevent the outrage. On the appointed day several hundred of these incendiary ruffians calling themselves, par excellence, the People"-" free and independent too"! proceeded to the convent, and in the broad glare of day, and in the actual presence, and with the connivance of several of the public authorities, who as usual dared not offend the "Sovereign Will" by any judicious, or timely interference, and having ransacked and pillaged the establishment of much of its valuable property, and driven near fifty innocent, unprotected and unobtrusive females, whose acts were those of benevolent kindness and christian charity, destitute and houseless wanderers upon the world's broad waste, as well the numerous little children they had in charge, with sacrilegious hands, and the sacred name of liberty on their lips, fired the building in several places, and remained witnesses of the foul and blasted deed, until the entire lay buried in one confused pile of smoking ruins.

The unfortunate and unoffending inmates, for whose protection no arm was raised, for whom no sympathy was excited, and by whom mercy and forbearance was so needlessly evoked, sought temporary refuge with the little children under their care, in the recesses of the garden, and burying ground attached to the building; from whence they were again driven

by these base and cowardly assailants, who rioting undisturbed in the work of destruction they had commenced, completed the iniquitous villainy of their conduct, by breaking open the tombs and cemeteries of the unoffending dead, and with polluted hands, scattering the mouldering remnants of weak and decayed mortality inhumed therein, to the four winds of heaven.

The public press it is true, with some few exceptions condemned the atrocity. The authorities abashed at the consequence of this culpable and tame acquiescence, drew up some whining silly statement, which they sent forth as an apology: several of the more prominent of the ringleaders were arrested, and as if to add insult to outrage, were put through the stale mockery of a judicial trial; but as a well understood consequence, were all-all acquitted, except indeed, one young lad about fifteen or sixteen years of age, (named Marcy,) who was found guilty, and sentenced to some short term of confinement, still lessened in its duration, by the merciful interposition of the Governor, who in humble submission to the sovereign will, so well and forcibly expressed on the occasion, released young Marcy, after a few weeks only of his confinement had been gone through. Those of the conspirators who had been acquitted, became the objects of popular favour, as having suffered persecution in a just and righteous cause. They were carried in triumph to their respective homes, and subscriptions set on foot to reward their patriotism—the firmness and daring of what was