years the community increased rapidly. Not only did the new religion spread over the States, but missions were sent to England in the year 1837. This, however, proved to be a year of trial for the Saints at home; for in Kirtland there appeared to be extensive disunion and apostasy. Somehow or other a bank they had established failed, ruining some of the Mormons; who, thereupon, brought most grave accusations against their leaders, among which were murder and theft. This being regarded as a swindle exposed, another persecution" com

menced. The Saints strove to put it down by means of their armed men, known as the "Danite Band;" occasioning a collision, in which several of the local militia were killed, as well as one of the leading Mormons. Although the Prophet was captured and tried for his life more than once, hostilities raged with great fury between the Saints and the Gentiles, and battles were fought in which many were slaughtered on both sides. Joseph Smith contrived to escape punishment, and established his numerous followers at Commerce, Hancock county, a new state

1844, where they were attacked by a body of Missourians. About five o'clock in the afternoon of the 27th the doors were forced, and the Prophet, as well as his brother Hyrum, killed.

Such was the career of the modern Mahomet at best but a burlesque upon his prototype; but the new religion was not destroyed with its founder. There were two persons who desired to be his successor: one was Rigdon, the printer, the supposed originator of The Book of Mormon, who had for years been, as it were, the right hand of the Prophet; and Mr. Brigham Young, who had been on a mission to England, and had lately been elected" President of the Twelve Apos

As

tles." The latter had much the greater influence amongst the Mormon leaders, and contrived to secure his appointment as President of the Church, to the discomfiture of his rival, who at once abandoned the ungrateful Saints. Nauvoo had been made an unsafe abiding place, it was determined in 1845 to send a detachment to seek security in some spot remote from Gentile influence; but while the Mormons were debating their expatriation, their enemies expedited it in a summary manner by expelling them the town in September, 1846. It was high time they were got rid of; for according to affidavits sworn by persons who possessed a knowledge of their pro

nently hostile to the new sect, of whose sayings and doings they had had opportunities of being thoroughly acquainted. The prophet had made no secret of his intentions to act like Mahomet, in destroying those opposed to his pretensions. The "President of the Twelve Apostles," Thomas B. March, and "One of the Twelve Apostles," Orson Hyde, Mormons who ought to have been well acquainted with the designs of their chief, swore, "I have heard the prophet say that he would yet tread down his enemies, and walk over their dead bodies; that if he was not let alone, he would be a second Mahomet to this generation, and that he would make it one gore of blood from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean; that like Mahomet, whose motto in treating for peace was the Alcoran or the sword,' so should it eventually be with us, 'Joseph Smith or the sword.'" Such menaces had, of course, increased the public excitement, and the saints ultimately succumbed. This occasioned their exodus to the Rocky Mountains. Colonel Kane, of the United States, who came upon the emigrants after their expulsion, states that they counted over twenty thousand in Nauvoo a few months before; but that during their long pilgrimage this number was greatly reduced by privations and fatigue. He found a caravan of two thousand waggons, besides innumerable other vehicles, filing wearily along an almost impassable road. It was a labour of no small difficulty to get the cattle to ford the rivers, as there were some thirty thousand head in the drove. An exploring party having selected the Great Salt Lake Valley, a site was chosen for a city, in which the great body of the Mormons established themselves. The country was called Utah Territory, or the State of Deseret. There The Deseret News was first published in the middle of June, 1850; a tabernacle was planned, and other appropriate structures raised, till the Great Salt Lake city assumed the character of a metropolis worthy of being the home of a population of Saints-a population that now began to increase as with a new impulse, large accessions coming from Europe, undeterred by the long sea voyage, or still more hazardous land journey, that had to be undertaken at its conclusion. After landing at New Orleans, there ensues a voyage to the Mississippi of 1300 miles, another to Council Bluffs of 800 miles, and then a

most toilsome land journey of 1030 miles.

The leaders of the Mormons for the next ten years devoted themselves to the organization of municipal institutions, and to forwarding their recognition as a separate State by the Government at Washington; but they did not find themselves quite so secure from Gentile interference in their far-off "location" as they had hoped to be, and in a few years an armed force was sent into the Utah territory, from the United States, and again there was a general arming among the Saints. It was not only clear that the latter desired to be independent of all authority except that of their appointed leaders, but that crimes were committed in Utah-more especially assassinations

that declared their independence of United States law. For this reason Federal army marched into the territory. Though Mr. Brigham Young by a proclamation forbade its advance, and threatened to repel force by force, he left the great Salt Lake city with 25,000 of the brethren, when the troops marched into it in 1858. Some "troubles" occurred, but no energy was exhibited by the Federal Government, and its army in 1861 evacuated the Utah territory. By the secession of the Southern States they soon found themselves too much occupied to attend to the Mormon difficulty, and the leaders of this fast-increasing community, who hate the Federals quite as much as do the Confederates, regard with infi nite satisfaction the course which the civil war has hitherto taken.

We have thus briefly traced the progress of one of the most barefaced impo sitions that ever flourished-and this, be it remembered, not in an age of intel lectual as well as spiritual darkness, like that which existed when sham Messiahs found favour, but in an age and among the most religious and most intelligent of the Anglo-Saxon race. The desire of the half-educated population of the United States for what are called "New Lights," may in some measure account for its success there, but it is not so easy to account for its success here. Since 1837, when the first Mormon missionaries arrived in England-the first conference was held at Preston in December of that year-converts have been multiplying at a prodigious rate. Here in 1840 appeared the first English edition of The Latter Day Saints' Hymn Book. In the following year was published the first English edi

tion of The Book of Mormon. In 1851, at Liverpool, appeared The Pearl of Great Price, being a choice selection from the Revelations, Translations, and Narratives of Joseph Smith. In 1853, the first number of The Journal of Discourses, by Brigham Young and others. Here, too, was reproduced that notable forgery, The Book of Abraham, "translated from some records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt, purporting to be the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, written by his own hand on papyrus.' Liverpool has also produced and reproduced numerous other Mormon works; several have been translated into French, German, Italian, and Danish, but the great field for their translation has been Wales. No less than forty-three publications have been circulated in the Welsh language, varying in cost from a farthing to four shillings and sixpence. As the prices will suggest the class for which they are intended, we give them two at a farthing, nine at a halfpenny, fifteen at a penny, two at three-halfpence, five at twopence, one at twopence halfpenny, one at fourpence, one at sixpence, one at one shilling and twopence, and a select few varying from two shillings and a halfpenny to four and sixpence. Wales resembles the United States in the freedom of its dissent, and it is from the more extravagant professors of religion among the population of the Principality, that converts to Mormonism are made.

It may, with a fair show of reason, be asked, What have the shepherds been about that such wholesale desertion from the fold has been so easy? in other words, What has been the use of the multitude of teachers and pastors that have been provided for the ignorant, when such a transparent humbug as these inscriptions on gold plates, and papyrus written upon by Abraham when in Egypt, have been allowed to seduce more than a hun dred thousand Christian souls? It must not be thought that the shepherds slept at their posts, or that the schoolmaster was more abroad than usual. Both priests and laymen have been active in warning the ignorant of the perils of credulity; exposures have not only proceeded from clergymen of different persuasions, and gentlemen of high literary and scientific attainments, but from ex-Mormons who have betrayed the secrets of the prisonhouse without the slightest reserve. Ladies, too, have come forward, and with a grave and earnest warning published to the

world all they could discover respecting Mormonism; of course not forgetting the Oriental practice of polygamy-such are Mrs. Ferris, the lady of a gentleman sent by the Federal Government into the Utah territory; Mrs. Maria Ward, another American lady, who wrote more than one exposure; and Mrs. Mary Ettie V. Smith, a sister of one of the Mormon high priests, who therefore must have possessed numberless opportunities of being behind the scenes when the Saints were before the footlights. Such warnings, however, were not likely to come in the way of those for whom they were most needed; nor were the clever articles in the Edinburgh and Westminster Reviews, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, in the Echo du Pacifique, in L'Illustration Journal Universel, and in other influential periodicals published in the two worlds, likely to do more good in that direction. The propagators of the new faith addressed themselves directly to their intended converts, astonished and mystified them with statements they could not question, promised blessings in tropical luxuriance, and of course their mission was crowned with such extraordinary success, that public curiosity became roused, and more and more turned towards the singular community settled in the Valley of the Salt Lake, whenever an intelligent traveller published an account of his residence in the Utah territory.

The Great Salt Lake city was visited by Mr. W. Kelly in 1819, who subsequently published An Excursion to California over the Prairies, Rocky Mountains, and Great Sierra Nevada; but in these two volumes his revelations respecting the Saints were far from sufficient to satisfy the reading public. In 1855 Mr. William Chandless crossed the prairies to the Mormon city, and two years later published A Visit to Salt Lake, and a Residence in the Mormon Settlements at Utah-a pleasant, readable book. There was another work produced about the same time by a companion of Colonel, now General Fremont, of the Federal Army-Incidents of Travel and Adventures in the Far West, by M. Carvalho, a very favourable account of the Utah territory and of its population. But a much more pretentious work has just appeared, under the title of The City of the Saints, and across the Rocky Mountains to California, by Richard F. Burton, author of A Pilgrimage to Medinah and Mekkah, a bulky tome of 707 pages, of which more than 300 pages are taken up by a description