lous and commercial part of the United States, and where I should settle in preference to any other," exhibits a large comprehension of the forces and elements of Western growth.
The American popularity of the younger Michaux's journal, in its own time, proved his ability to interpret the ideas of our people, and the sympathetic interest of a cultured Frenchman in the democratizing processes of the New World.
Thaddeus Mason Harris
Thaddeus Mason Harris, author of the Journal of a Tour into the Territory Northwest of the Alleghany Mountains, was one of the coterie of liberal clergymen who occupied the New England pulpits in the early part of the nineteenth century. As a member of this group, Harris's observations of the Western country are of peculiar interest. He had the training of the typical New Englander—"plain living and high thinking." Born in Charlestown in 1768, his family were driven from their home at the battle of Bunker Hill, and three years later the father died of exposure contracted during his service in the Revolutionary army. As the eldest of the children, Thaddeus was sent to "board around" among the neighboring farmers, one of whom took sufficient interest in the promising lad to fit him for college. An accidental supply of money at a later period, accepted as a special interposition of Providence, made such an impression upon the young man's mind that he determined to enter the ministry. He was graduated from Harvard in 1787, in the same class with John Quincy Adams. After a year's teaching at Worcester, the position was tendered him of private secretary to the newly-chosen President Washington, but an attack of small-pox pre-
