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BOSTON LIBRARY

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OF WEST TENNESSEE

"Ridentem dicere verum, quid vetat ?"-HOR.

NEW EDITION.

NEW-YORK:

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. & J. HARPER,

NO. 82 CLIFF-STREET,

AND SOLD BY THE PRINCIPAL BOOKSELLERS THROUGHOUT THE

UNITED STATES.

1 8 3 3.

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
MAR 5 1941

[Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1833, by J. & J. Harper, in the Office of the Clerk of the Southern District of New-York.]

PREFACE.

So fashionable has it become to write a preface, that, like an epitaph, it now records of its subject, not what it is, but what it ought to be. The mania for book-making has recently assumed an epidemic character, and, like the late pestilence, unaffected by all changes of weather, save that a murky evening generally aggravates its symptoms, it makes its attacks from quarters the least expected, and emanating from beneath the dim light of some old rusty lamp, sheds abroad its sleepy, yawning influence. A book and preface are now considered indissoluble; so much so, that to see a book without a preface would be as rare as to see a preface without a book. Yet some men have been so lost to all fashion, as to send forth the treasures of genius without this expected formality; but as I do not aspire to that elevated niche in the temple of Fame, which such men have been allowed to occupy by universal consent, I must

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