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of whatever they are taught. It is rarely indeed that they change their religion. They are obstinate in all things-it is part of their national character; but in religious opinions they are simply immovable. If you reason with them they look upon you as an appointed agent of the tempter of souls. A lady in Newport had an excellent servant who became a Mormon. She was a good girl, and her mistress took a deal of trouble to convince her of her folly, and to explain to her what life in Utah actually is. These efforts seemed but to confirm the girl in her intention, and her mother professed her joy at her daughter's firmness, and hoped that she would become one of the wives of Brigham Young, as she was a pretty girl." These were the

We heard of several of these miracles, but blind, unhesitating, unwavering acceptance could not succeed in seeing one, although there is a man in Monmouthshire who declares that he is ready to move one of the largest mountains in the county, called Twm Barlwm, down miles away to the moors; and that he not merely could, but would do it, only that he does not like to injure Lord Tredegar, whose property it partly is. The reluctance of this man to remove his neighbor's landmark is much appreciated in the district. An actual miracle was performed by another elder a little time ago. A certain man who had a hump upon his back was introduced to a Mormon meeting. The elders present announced that they had taken pity on their brother's deformity, and as a reward of his fidelity to the faith they had made up their minds to remove the hump. Even mother's own words. These characteristics when achieved by a miracle, such an operation must necessarily cause a mess, and they consequently took the man behind a curtain to save the feelings of the congregation. Their prayers were long and boisterous, and the audience soon began to see the effect of them. For the curtain scarcely reached down to the heels of the party, and the people in front distinctly saw a stream run down the legs of the hunchback. But if the operation was a miracle, the hump itself was no less marvellous, for the stream that ran down was not of blood, but of sawdust, and a hump of sawdust is not usual even in these last days." Presently the man came forth straight and smiling, and a solemn thanksgiving was held for his deliverance.

of the Welsh-boundless credulity and an unalterable fidelity to their religion-render Wales a chosen land for men of the Wycherley class, and preaching is as common an occupation as that of shoemaking. Promises which an English workman would laugh at as the dreams of a madman are received implicitly by the poor Welsh collier or haulier as sober realities. They are like plastic clay in the hands of Mormon agents. The very origin of the new revelation exactly suits them. The miracle of the golden plates, committed to the charge of a poor ignorant man like one of themselves, is a story possessing unspeakable fascination for them. They never tire of hearing about it, and they hope that they in their turn may one day be selected as the On another occasion-this occurred in Car- instruments of communicating fresh messages diff- -a husband urged his wife, who was not from Heaven to man. The true story of a Mormon, to go to a meeting, and promised Smith's imposture they look upon as the inher that she should see there" the angels of vention of the devil. They would brave any the Lord." She went, and during the ser- danger, and endure any torture for the sake vice the lights were turned out, and she saw of their religion. Nor is it inconsistent, perfigures in white moving about. Close by her haps, with human nature, that the more defeet she discerned strange small figures mov-basing the superstition to which an untrained ing slowly, and rustling as they moved. She was probably expected to faint here, but she seized one of the figures at her feet instead, and put it in her pocket. When she got It is only in the towns that a stranger can home she found that it consisted of a few hope to get inside a Mormon meeting-house, frogs in a white paper bag. The elders de- and it was not without some trouble that, clared that these were miracles, and their even in Newport, we could ascertain where dupes believed them. There is nothing that the sect assembled. At last a small public a Welsh enthusiast will not believe. Their house was pointed out, and there two or three devotion to their creed, whatever that creed Sunday evenings ago we went to hear the promay be, is wonderful. It is shown in a ceedings. The room was apparently used for

mind links itself, the more ardent is its attachment to it, and the more firmly does it take hold of it.

the women have some excuse for being in such haste to get to Utah.

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an Odd Fellows' lodge, and there were not above forty persons present-for the exportation to Utah a few days before had thinned The first elder (whose name was Webb) the ranks. They were all of the working sat down, and another rose to succeed him— class, some very respectably dressed, and the a mean, yellow, dirty man, who spoke a women generally clean and well looking. north-country dialect with a Yankee twang, Two or three women had children in arms, and looked the incarnation of a vulgar hypoand there were other children of five or six crite. There was nothing whatever in his years of age among the congregation. There manner indicative of sincerity of purpose. were also a few young men in the room, lank He spoke in a bullying tone, using great veand gaunt, and having a self-satisfied smirk hemence and very Mormon-like language, on their countenances, as if they were look- He began by remarking, "the people's minds ing forward to the bliss of having a dozen is a good deal more enlightened now than it wives. The elders were worn, haggard men, were. There was much ignorance and suwho looked as though they actually had the perstition in high places, which prevented wives, and did not find it a bliss at all, but the new gospel finding its way to the people. quite the contrary. There were two or three Men refused to believe the message of the very old men there, and some boys who are Prophet Joseph Smith, but he would remind not yet eligible for Utah. The whole group them that every inspired messenger had been had gathered round a little dark grubby man, received with doubt, including the Saviour who was preaching to them with much ear- himself. Smith's followers were reviled, but nestness and volubility. "I tell you,” shrieked the harsh grating He was insisting upon the divine inspira- voice," that gods and angels look down upon tion of the Book of Mormon. Rude, unpol-you with approval, and that you are acceptished, and unlettered as he was, he impressed able to them." Working himself into a parus as being a thoroughly earnest man. His oxysm of wrath, his emaciated sensual face argument was that fresh revelation from God on fire with anger, he denounced all revilers was necessary to convert the present age. of "God's chosen people," future and to The Scriptures are not sufficient for this pur- come, and particularly warned the strangers pose, for they fail even to convince. Schol- present that they would suffer dreadful punars and divines are always wrangling about ishments if they came there to mock. Some the meaning of this and the other passage, of the women, however, having perhaps aland many of the laws laid down in the Bible ready marked the elder stranger for their were intended for a people and a state of so- own, looked at him in a spirit of gentleness, ciety now passed away. Moreover, God has and were evidently inclined to deal more merconstantly held direct communication with cifully with him than was the saint. This his servants. An instance, the speaker said, yellow, dirty man then pulled what looked might be found in St. Mark (he should have like a window rag from his pocket and rubbed said St. Matthew) where the Saviour ad- his oily face with it, and resumed his speech dresses Peter in the words, "Blessed art in a lower key. Joseph Smith was merely, thou, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood he said, like an errand-boy who had received hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father a message from God to deliver to mankind. which is in Heaven." It was a similar rev-" I myself," he added, "have received the elation that God made to his servant Joseph gift of the Holy Spirit, and there is many Smith. The speaker dwelt upon this point here as knows it." Then he waxed wrath at some length, but his line of argument had again at the strangers (who had been listenevidently been disturbed by the entry of ing throughout with the utmost gravity and strangers. He talked at the strangers-there patience) and said that others before them were three of them-a good deal, and the had mocked the Lord's anointed and suffered young women also carefully surveyed them, for it. This last objurgation lasted several perhaps mentally calculating the possibility minutes, and made the elder hotter and of their making proposals to them by and by greasier than ever, insomuch that the winas true Mormons. And it must be owned dow-rag was fished out again and applied to that if the Mormon men in Wales are all of his forehead. Finding that his denunciations the type who were present at that meeting, did not disconcert the strangers, the elder

suddenly brought his exhortation to a close, | upon the happiness his belief afforded him, and said, in a low, quick voice, "there will and in the vague melancholy search after hapbe a meeting afterwards for our own people piness which all men make this peculiar form only." A hymn was sung,-it was a strange of religion steps in and professes to lead the unmeaning doggrel,-a prayer was offered, way. It undertakes to realize our hopes, not and the people, evidently puzzled, rose to de- hereafter only, but on this earth, where hithpart. But the yellow man, probably not erto we have been taught to expect disaphaving exhausted his store of ribaldry and pointment. Christ is shortly coming to his blasphemy, called out to them to stay, desir- kingdom, and looks down upon the labors of ing that strangers only should leave. As it his " Latter-day Saints" with peculiar favor. was evidently useless to stay, the strangers Their reward is sure. Then, so far as matedid leave, and were presently followed by rial circumstances are concerned, their dethree women, who had possibly been told off sires will be provided for. To men they offer by the elders to try what they could do with a piece of land, with the prospect of indethe unbelievers. pendence that great ambition of the workThe strangers got into conversation with ing classes, which it is nearly impossible for these women. All were young, and two of them to gratify in this country. Here they them were going to Utah with the next batch must drudge and toil on, with little hope of of emigrants. They particularly wished to bettering their condition; there they may be know what the strangers thought of the meet- landed proprietors at once, working for their ing, and unanimously agreed with them in own profit, their children (which are here an thinking that the yellow, dirty man, made a encumbrance) a help and a blessing to them, mistake in abusing persons who happened to and the encouraging thought in their minds drop in at the service, since he might drive that while thus enjoying the fruits of their away those who would become converts. labor they are performing a religious duty, Being asked whether they expected to be and helping to set up the last kingdom of married in Utah, they said "Yes" with God upon the earth. Women are taught to alacrity. In reply to a further question, one believe that in that favored land beyond the acknowledged that she should not like to be Rocky Mountains, they may marry and have apportioned a twelfth part of a husband's children without the fear of their being love and attention: "I hope to keep my hus- brought to want or shame; while the sensual band to myself, as you hope to keep your find a Mohammedan Paradise prepared for wife, I suppose. "Yes, but your religion them, and their favorite vices encouraged as allows a man to have several wives." "That a religious obligation. The man who has the is only what is said of us. Don't you be- largest number of children is the most honlieve it. Only some of the elders have more ored in Utah, for he does most to strengthen wives than one." This girl further said that the kingdom. Mothers gladly give up their her age was twenty, that she had been brought daughters for what they deem a sacred cause. up to Mormonism from a child, and that she Their imaginations are enraptured by the would not change her religion for all the stories of peace and contentment and happiworld. Her father was a Mormon, she said, ness to be enjoyed by the Great Salt Lake. and sometimes preached. She was good- No wonder that the ignorant believe, and belooking, and so sincere that the tears started lieve gladly, in representations which cheer to her eyes when she spoke of her religion. their hearts and promise an alleviation of She was exactly the kind of person the Mor- their hardships-no wonder that when Church mons seek to entrap-they invariably work and Dissent are alike passive, the poison is their ministrations upon the best looking widely distributed and absorbed, and that young women they can find. thousands fall victims to that mirage which lures them to fresh scenes in the vain hope of finding a happier lot—the hollow chimera which has wrecked so many, and against which the high and eternal truths of Christianity alone can and ought to prevail.

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It may seem extraordinary to some that a creed such as that of Mormonism should make the progress it does, but after attending this meeting we were little surprised at the circumstance. The first speaker dwelt much

From The Spectator. HORSEBACK IN MANTCHU TARTARY.*

at Tien-tsin, was seized with an eager desire to test the new treaty and gratify his own MR. FLEMING is a traveller after the ancient curiosity by a journey into the interior, and rather than the modern fashion, and the great the arrival of a Shanghai friend decided him volume in which he has recorded his experi- to fix on Moukden, the capital of Manchuria, ences will be read for reasons other than the as his ultimate destination. The usual route charm of the author's style. He does not is by sea, but the travellers wanted to ascermanufacture epigrams, or startle his reader tain if the provision of the treaty which alby new and acute theories; his own reflec- lows Europeans to travel had been explained tions are sometimes oddly simple, and his in the interior, and resolved to do the distance, whole narrative reads rather like the talk of some seven hundred miles, on horseback. a garrulous old man than the sharp incisive They could obtain no interpreter, but they descriptions to which recent travellers have had a sharp groom, and Mr. Michie knew accustomed society. He has occasionally a some little of the Mandarin dialect; so, proflux of words most annoying to critics, and vided with a passport from the consul, and he dwells on his personal miseries, particu- another from a Chinese official, three strong larly those he suffered from bad smells, with ponies, a cart, and a sufficiency of silver flora minuteness not a little tiresome to all who ins and copper" cash," they set out on their care more about the Mantchus than Mr. dangerous expedition round the Gulf of George Fleming. But his narrative is a Pechelee. Of course, such a march produced most charming one, nevertheless, or, it may an adventure an hour, sometimes comic, be, in consequence of these very defects. The sometimes exasperating, but always fresh, big volume is neither more nor less than a and always recorded in a tone which reminds huge gossiping letter, addressed by a fine-na- one rather of Smollett than any more recent tured, clear-speaking fellow, with the very writer. Mr. Fleming manages to make us keenest of eyes, to a reader who wants to perceive, not only the points of the landscape know "all about" a portion of China never and the peculiarities of the people, but the visited by an Englishman, or, indeed, by a conditions under which life is permanently European, except some chance Russian or carried on, the reasons, as it were, why forgotten Jesuit. He has an untrodden re- China is so populous and so orderly an emgion to tell of, and he photographs it and its pire. The impression left will decidedly people and their ways, instead of manufac- raise the Englishman's estimate of Chinese turing theories to account for its and their civilization, by showing him how very closely existence. Long and lifelike descriptions, it resembles his own. Mr. Fleming, for exreading like pages out of Hakluyt's collection, ample, soon after he had fairly escaped from are interspersed with personal anecdotes, the beaten track, came a few miles beyond local legends, stories of adventures in South- the little town of Fungtai upon a succession ern China, attempts at Chinese history, and of villages like those of a prosperous English little sketches, some of them revealing no county: "Ten li further we found another common artistic power. There are two of quite as charming and as rich in the possesthem in particular, "dining before an audi- sion of excellent water, with its little cottages ence," and "the useless passport," which built of wood and whitewashed, their roofs are really admirable for the mixed impression tiled or thatched, and roomy enclosures also of fun and fidelity they leave on the reader's of brick, finished in the most workman-like eye. The second in particular, a sitting man- manner, and the attached gardens stocked darin, surrounded by policemen, gives a bet- with fruit trees and vegetables. Every little ter impression at once of the similarity and aggregation of houses, spread evenly and not the difference between China and Europe than too thickly over the country, was snugly emanything we remember to have seen. All bosomed in genial sylvan shade, from the the personages are Tartar to the backbone, light green curtain of which they peeped out yet it is an Austrian guard-room which the lovingly on the tastefully planted rows of sketch suggests. trees that grew apart from them like model plantations, for fuel or building purposes." In the distance stood up huge black mountains of granite, and, "from their feet, ex

Mr. Fleming, while serving in July, 1861, *Travels on Horseback in Mantchu Tartary. By G. Fleming. Hurst and Blackett.

culturalists and traders. They occupied every crammable corner, and wedged each other so that they could scarcely extricate themselves tightly into the middle of the narrow street from the stalls, from the piles of goods heaped up on each side of the thoroughfare, and from the live stock kicking, squealing, bleating, lowing, and neighing on every hand.

"Here business was being transacted by staid, bargain-making, healthy old men, clad and the great brimmed straw hat scarcely atin sober homespun blue or white cotton stuff, tached to their venerable heads by bands of black tape.

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Speculations and questionable ventures were sparkling in the eyes of the younger negotiators, who, attired in their best outfits

consisting of a maximum of silk, and a minimum of the less pretentious material, with clean-shaven heads, and long, wellplaited, glistening queues, too elaborate to be protected from the great heat by any sort of covering-talked loudly and long, and strutted around their customer, or around the stock in which they were about to invest their capital, using their fans in the most coquettish manner, far more for display than for any real benefit to their olive complexions.

tending away to the right and right-front, | really consists. A little way on Mr. Flemand margined only by the sky, lay a cosmo- ing stumbled on such a village on market rama of wavy vegetation, a sea of yellowish day. green, placidly sweeping and nodding in every "At thirty li from Kia-ping we reached direction, and obeying the light puffy airs the cosy little town of Cooyuh, and on a marfrom the ravines and gullies. This is the re-ket-day; for at its busiest hour we found sult of uninterfered-with industry and unwea- ourselves struggling through a crowd of agriried toil; a fair and acceptable specimen of the glory and pride of the sons of Ham, alike their source of grandeur and permanency, their populousness and prosperity, uniformity, and cheerful peacefulness as a nation. It is a country cultivated to the utmost degree that mortal man, unaided by science, could hope to attain." The high roads, narrowed to the last practicable point to save land, are left unfenced, except by an occasional trench, and approached by still narrower paths, dividing fields covered with millet or barley, or the castor-oil plant, or studded with olive green melons as thick as cannon balls, or broken by walled-in gardens of exquisite horticulture, the walls covered with creepers, the frequent arbors loaded with vines, and the plots crowded with herbs, vegetables for the table, and peach, pear, and plum trees. Flowers grown only to look at are few, and those chiefly honeysuckle and cockscomb. The whole adult population were at work in the fields or gardens, the very aged sitting about under the huge trees which shade the village, and guarding the children at their play. Every village has its roadside well full of clear sparkling water, there is streaming traffic on the roads, and everywhere there is an air of comfort and absence of pressure from above which greatly modifies the English impression of Chinese manners. There is always a village inn, and a guard-house or policestation of some kind or other, a few shops, a forge, and one or two houses of a wealthier class, the English mansion being the only feature of the scene the absence of which Mr. Fleming regrets. Probably the Chinese antry, who till their own land and eat its product, instead of taking only a share in the shape of wages, would, if they knew all the facts, be of a different opinion. There must be hundreds of thousands of such villages in China in which life flows on for centuries in orderly tranquillity, and it is in these, and not in the packed cities, where life is compressed by competition till it almost expires, that the true strength of China, the conservative force which protects its civilization,

THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE.

peas

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"The more wealthy farmer, the owner of but a small plot, and the day laborer, all mingled and bargained, bought and sold, in the quietest and readiest manner possible, without disturbance, and, so far as we could see in such a dense crowd, without those preservfairs-the lynx-eyed policemen. ers of the peace in Hesperian markets and

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Stalls, shaded by square-topped white cotton umbrellas, which nearly knocked our heads off in consequence of our not stooping low enough to pass beneath them, were shaking beneath every kind of native produce ;. and long rows of sacks stood on end with open mouths, exhibiting their contents, perfectly lined each side of the way. Beans, pease, wheat, barley, and millet, were the staple articles exposed for sale. Baskets full of fresh and salted vegetables; stands laden with home-made cotton cloth, coarse, but thick and durable; or great bundles of the white flocculent material ready for spinning; sorts of hardware and pottery of native manlittle stores of alum or sal-ammoniac; all ufacture; tailoring and shoemaking booths; while harness and saddlery hung over all the poles and pegs of the saddlers' compartment..

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