messages at the Lothbury Station. One revelation commands a rich man to contribute all his property to the use of the Church; another, that my servant, Joseph Smith, jun., shall have a house built for him in which to translate;' a third, that he who would understand the mysteries of the kingdom must provide food and raiment for my servant Joseph; another declares that Oliver Cowdery is not fit to be trusted with the moneys; and yet another says to Emma Smith, the prophet's wife, thou shalt be unto thy husband for a scribe, and it shall be given to thee also to make a selection of sacred hymns.' If we might judge from these announcements, there would seem to be some confusion in the celestial councils; they are not acquainted, for instance, with the tenure of any individual life, sometimes entrusting a servant with a commission for a year who is released from all earthly responsibilities before the end of three months; occasionally they alter their decision after it has been announced, being evidently open to conviction; and very frequently they are compelled to discredit their own witnesses; so that 'my beloved servant' of to-day may be directed to be excommunicated and cast out to-morrow. It might appear somewhat suspicious to a mind foolishly influenced by such subordinate considerations, that nearly all the early propagandists of Mormonism have been thus discredited. Martin Harris, the farmer, whose money was lost in printing expenses, Oliver Cowdery, one of the three witnesses, and Sidney Rigdon, who on 'the prophet's' death aspired to the presidency, have all forfeited the approbation of Heaven and the confidence of the Church, and therefore their statements can no longer be relied upon! The elders of this sect quicken and satisfy the most voracious appetite for the marvellous, not to say the impossible and absurd, and only require from their votaries in return the manifestation of faith and obedience.

We have partly anticipated the mention of another cause of success-viz., the nature of the religion itself. So far as it is comprehensible, it is an ingenious adaptation to the inconsistencies of our human nature, since it succeeds in both exciting the wonder, and satisfying the curiosity of its disciples. Who does not know that the most credulous are also the most intolerant of speculative difficulties. It is easy to subject reason to faith, or faith to reason; hence the prevalence of superstition and scepticism; that is to most a far more unwelcome process by which we learn to give a reason for our faith. Now, Mormonism, if you have only faith enough to submit to it once for all, undertakes to remove all difficulties out of your path for evermore. Only believe that the Latter-Day Saints are the chosen people, through whom, and

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through whom only, God intends henceforth to reveal his purpose to mankind, and that the communications of the elders of the Church are the absolute will of Heaven, and your theology will become as simple as Mrs. Barbauld's science. The nature and perfections of the Divine Being, and all the details of the method of salvation, are made plain to the meanest understanding.' They acknowledge the validity of the Bible to a certain extent, but assert that it has been supplemented by Joseph Smith, and that where any discrepancy exists the truth lies on the side of the Book of Mormon, since it is the latest product of inspiration; by this means endeavouring to take away the ground of objection that their religion contravenes the teaching of Christianity. God is by them held to be nothing more than a perfect man, constituted in all points like ourselves-eating and drinking, loving and hating, resolving and repenting, and-we quote the expression with repugnance-'just as good at mechanical inventions as at any other business.' Salvation, of course, depends upon implicit obedience to the latest of the prophets. Baptism can be only by immersion-every other form of it is vanity. To this is added, baptism for the dead, or the immersion of living persons on behalf of deceased friends who had not undergone the rite; also the Communion of the Lord's Supper, in which water is substituted for the wine until the time when they can have new wine from the kingdom of God. We have not space to attempt any exposition of their views on faith, on prophecies and priesthoods, on death and resurrection, and on the millennium, or perfected triumph of the everlasting Gospel; indeed, it is unnecessary to refer to their doctrines at any length, since enough has been said to indicate that they are proclaimed with a startling novelty and an authoritative dogmatism which cannot fail to impress weak or enthusiastic minds. To them only pertains the revelation or the inheritance of the promises, for the Lord has seen the carnality of all the other churches of Christendom, and removed his candlestick from out of their midst, and having sealed the LatterDay Saints as his people by the miraculous gifts with which He has enriched them, they are now the depositories of spiritual truth, and the 'medium' of divine manifestation.

The scandalous spiritual wife system' is not a doctrine of Mormonism, and has been repudiated by the leaders of the sect; yet there cannot be any reasonable doubt of its existence, or even of its increase. It is no new thing amongst them, for the parentage of the practice may be traced up to the impulsive Sidney Rigdon, who introduced it in the palmy days during which he was a prince in Israel,' and who succeeded in gaining Joseph Smith himself for an ally and accomplice, if we may

credit the testimony of women who would scarcely swear falsely to their own hurt. Many passages in the Book of Doctrines distinctly set forth the sanctity of marriage, and condemn adultery in the very words of the New Testament; and it is only of late years that any of their writers have come to the defence of polygamy. At length a revelation allowed each of the high priests to take a spiritual wife'-but we may be sure the revelation succeeded the practice, not the practice the revelation. During the last two or three years this permission has been extended, and it is now recognised as one of the most prominent characteristics of the movement. As the woman can only be saved through the believing husband, and will in another world be partaker of her husband's degree of glory, the married elder may have another and yet another wife 'sealed to him spiritually ;' becoming to her, through this connexion, the instrument or channel of the divine blessing; and of course the higher his spiritual rank the more tempting the offer to the proposed wife, who would else be consigned to the uncovenanted mercies. If the woman be married also, this does not present any obstacle. Orson Hyde, Orson Pratt, and other missionaries, find a sanction for this state of morals in the example of the patriarchs, and even of Christ himself, although we must refrain from quoting the paragraph. Brigham Young, the president, rejoices in the possession of twenty-eight wives, and an innumerable generation of minor prophets.'

These appear to be some of the more obvious causes to which the development of Mormonism may be attributed; other and less prominent reasons there may be, the force of which cannot be fairly apprehended by those who are so far removed from the scene of its greatest achievements. It has become, for instance, a political power, not to be disregarded by any party struggling for pre-eminence in the United States, and this fact threatens to result in a new complication of its very singular history. Again, it is a significant circumstance that it is the only State religion in America, and we are unable to predict how far this newly attempted alliance of the spiritual and temporal authority may suit the genius of the Republic. And, again, since the emigration of the Mormons into Utah, they have more than ever aspired to be recognised as a model community, whose free institutions might offer a welcome retreat and fair field for the energies of the populations of Europe, sick of hereditary corruptions, and wearied with the creeping progress of reform; and they have unquestionably proved themselves to be a well-governed and industrious people, who have gone far towards a practical acknowledgment of the aphorism, labour is worship.' These and other phases of

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its character may each have had its influence according to differing tempers of mind. The last especially possesses wonderful attraction for sanguine spirits expecting the reproduction of the garden of Eden, or the restoration of the golden age. We recommend Mr. Prince, or his successor, to transfer the Agapemone to the other side of the Atlantic: and if Coleridge and Southey had been young men in 1850, it is possible they might have discovered their Pantisocracy in the valley of the Great Salt Lake.

The arguments of the missionaries who travel abroad to gather proselytes are ingenious, but scarcely worth reply. They assert the authenticity of their marvellous gold plates, and retort upon the non-existence of the original manuscripts of Scripture; but since it is absurd to suppose their mere word will be accepted as proof, they ought to be able to fall back upon consistency of testimony, and the internal evidence of the Book itself; instead of this, they have invalidated their own witnesses, and offer us as a message from God, perhaps the most wretched and meaningless stuff that ever was written. So when they claim the power of working miracles, we can only reply, we are quite ready to give up our old prejudices when they have demonstrated their possession of the gift. The remainder of their arguments might be reduced into the same demand for something beyond a dogmatic assertion. It is needless, however, to battle with windmills.

What may be the future of Mormonism it is, of course, impossible to predict. Mr. Gunnison, who resided in Utah during the year 1851, and to whom we are indebted for several of the facts we have stated, anticipates the dissolution of the external society. The causes to which he traces this probability are altogether selforiginated. He mentions the practice of polygamy, which destroys the homes of the disciples; the terrible influence of this plurality of wives upon the children in the community, resulting in a wear and tear which cannot be compensated by the introduction into the state of orderly famikes from abroad; the glaring discrepancies between their theology and the Bible, while professing to acknowledge it as a standard of faith; the system of tithes by which the president accumulates irresponsible riches to the impoverishment of the artisan and the labourer; and lastly, the struggle for pre-eminence and the certainty of divided counsels among the chiefs themselves. The conversions in the United States and the emigrations from foreign countries are already decreasing, and only a renewed persecution can avert its gradual corruption and decay, or a sudden explosion of its discordant

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ART IV.-Annotated Edition of the English Poets; Songs from the Dramatists. London: John W. Parker and Son, West Strand. 1854.

THERE is a pleasant sound about the title, Songs from the Dramatists, which seems to carry us at once, and without effort, back to the golden days of Elizabeth, when ladies who could spell but indifferently talked in poetry, and Flanders' wars and South-sea El Dorados were the common topics of society. No Dictionaries of Mythology and Biography, those royal roads to 'The tale of Troy divine,' had as yet been traced through the virgin soil of classic antiquity, and the woes of Agamemnon and Priam claimed precedence of the deeds of the Round Table' and Robin Hood, in the legendary lore of a people deducing its historical descent from Brute the Trojan. It is because these songs, as the dramas whence they are taken, reflect the peculiar tone of national sentiment that we so highly prize them; not merely because they furnish curious monuments of an epoch the chief glory of our annals. It is that, although the especial offspring of one phase in our history, we can sympathize with their general spirit, and recognise in them the same character of feeling, which, allowing for the change of circumstances, stirs us Nor was the setting alien to the requirements of such a tone in the literature, with its then blended freshness and ruggedness of originality. It is not the language of the common life of the period, as exhibited in the dialogue, nor yet is it the language of Chaucer, much less Spenser's courtly style, which contains the secret of their melody. The explanation must be sought in the circumstances of their origin, and the place they occupy in literature.

now.

It was in the reigns of Elizabeth and James that our language was gradually refined down to the supple instrument which we now find it. We have only to consider for a moment any author of the immediately preceding period; for instance, Latimer, or Sir Thomas More, fresh and vigorous as their style may be, by the side of the writers of Charles the First's age, to be at once persuaded that some great change had intervened. But this was not a silent revolution effected by the gradual and imperceptible innovation of manners; by the heightened elegance and magnificence of the court and nobility. Courtiers had, doubtless, talked as freely and fluently in the palaces of the two first Tudors as in the dilettante circles of the last. We might have gone on for ever using the dialect of our ancestors of four hundred years ago, had not the peculiar energy of that reign and epoch