The National Magazine.

OCTOBER, 1854.

EDITORIAL NOTES AND GLEANINGS.

Mormons-Correspondents-Preaching for the Times -D. D.'s-Geese, Cats, and Bachelors-SuicidesThe Contraction riz.-Remnant of Popery-Was Queen Elizabeth dark or fair?-Colt in the Caucasus -Effect of Fear-Cost of War-Sauley's Discovery of the Ruins of the Cities of the Plain-Eloquence of Chatham-Channing-Gray's Elegy-A Terrible Wound of the Imagination-Immigration-Longwinded-Macaulay-Noble Minds.

WE give, in our present Number, a valuable original article on the Mormons, correcting, in important respects, the paper in our June Number on the same subject. If the writer's statements, respecting the treatment of the Mormons by their neighbors, in Illinois, are correct, (and he is certainly a good authority,) the public opinion has erred egregiously. We are happy to be the vehicle of better information. Some valuable and new estimates of Mormonism are presented in this communication; the reader will find it well worthy of his attention, notwithstanding some unnecessary severities which still remain after our endeavors to prune them.

CORRESPONDENTS will please bear in mind that we go to press at least a month before our date; communications, therefore, must sometimes remain on hand for weeks before they can be inserted, and even after this delay, some articles must be still longer postponed, if we would not have too many of the same or similar kind inserted at once. We must plead an old maxim of the highest authority: "Let patience have its perfect work."

In our article on President Wayland's views of the Preaching for the Times, reference is made to the usefulness of lay ecclesiastical laborers in Ireland, and to proposals for something of the kind in England. The day after we had written that article, the New-York Tribune contained a letter from England, in which occurs the following passage:

"Meantime the bishops-it is nearly time-have begun to see the necessity for adapting the services of the Church and her agencies to the condition and wants of the population. A report has been presented to Convocation, and which is to be, by the queen's permission, laid before parliament, recommending the shortening of some of the Church services, and the employment of agency to meet the wants of the population, especially in the densely peopled manufacturing towns. The Roman Catholic Church has an endless and unlimited set of agencies, male and female, for carrying religious instruction and ministrations, which the clergy cannot overtake, to the homes of the people; and the Anglican clergy begin to think it full time that they had something of the same sort. In Ireland, there is much of this agency-missionaries, Scripturereaders, and catechists; but their labors are directed to the Roman Catholics. This, of course, the priests do not like-warn the people against them from the altars, and they are often insulted and ill-treated by fellows who rejoice in the opportunity, though they are often made to pay for it by the law. But in England, there is a wide field, and a legitimate one, the judicious cultivation of which might be productive of the happiest

social and moral results."

The chief objections, so far as we have observed them, against Dr. Wayland's views, are that such an employment of uncultivated laymen in the labors of the ministry would be incom

patible with its professional responsibilities and dignity; and, secondly, that it would lead to dangerous theological crudities and heresies. We should have noticed these objections in our article, had we not prolonged it already to too great a length. We are tempted here to refer to them a moment.

No one is more ready than we are to admit the scientific claims of the profession. Philology, psychology, Biblical criticism, ethics-the most profound departments of scientific inquiry -are at its very basis. We would not degrade it from this dignity. Though the Scriptures nowhere adopt scientific forms, and the apostles and first preachers of Christianity perhaps never used them, and scarcely ever attempted technical definitions of theological subjects, yet their legitimacy is as unquestionable as in the natural sciences. Nature and religion are analogous in this respect. Nature presents no scientific formula; the physicist observes the phenomena of the vegetable world, in their lavish confusion, and reduces them to scientific arrangement, forming botany; in the same manner his observations of the mineral world give rise to mineralogy, of the structure of the earth to geology, &c. The revelations of Scripture, designed for popular use and assuming no technical forms or terms, nevertheless, like the works of their great Author, in nature, admit of scientific classification and discussion. Scientific theology is then legitimate; we not only admit it-we contend for it. But does the fact imply that only professional or trained men are competent for the labors of the ministry? As well might you contend that botanists are alone fitted for the labors of agriculture. The scientific farmer has, doubtless, advantages over his uneducated neighbor, and it would be well if all agriculturists were trained to the highest learning of their business. But not for ages, if ever, will the world get its bread by hands of such skill. It would starve were all others to be excluded from the art. Now we affirm that the ministerial office is analogous, and that while learned ability should ever be sustained in it, even to the utmost, the aggregate of its labors and also of its results must be in the hands of practical, unlearned workmen, and that this fact need not detract from the dignity which scholarship and genius may give the profession. We think it will rather enhance their estimation by giving them a more distinct relative importance.

There are professions which are so essentially scientific, or at least technical, as not to admit of this accommodation. The law is such; no man, not educated to it, could successfully manage its cases we do not say, however, that this is not the fault of the law itself. Medicine may

be placed in the same category. But it is obviously otherwise with religion-religion, which, like agriculture, as in the above illustration, has a practical range so extensive, so popular, so distinguished from its philosophical basis.

As to the second objection, both theory and practice are against it-theory, at least as we hold in this country, and, as the tendency of the age implies, in all countries. The doctrine of the safety, nay of the superior safety of the popular judgment, is fundamental in the civilization of the age. We popularize legislation,

To these queries the editor of the Notes and Queries replies:

"The office is connected with the chapel royal, St. James's, and is at present held by Dr. Charles Wesley, who is also sub-dean. The appointment is by the Dean of the Chapel Royal, the Bishop of London. The confessor (sometimes called chaplain) officiates at the early morning prayers, so punctually attended by the late Duke of Wellington."

A

WAS QUEEN ELIZABETH DARK OR FAIR?-An English periodical put this question some time ago to the curious in historical matters. correspondent, in reply, quotes the following picture of the celebrated queen from a rare old book, Sir John Hayward's Annals of the First Four Years of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth :—

"Shee was a lady upon whom nature had bestowed, and well placed, many of her fayrest favors: of stature meane, slender, streight, and amiably composed; of such state in her carriage, as every motion of her seemed to beare majesty; her haire was inclined to pale yellow, her foreheade large and faire, and seemeing seat for princely grace; her eyes lively and sweete, but short-sighted; her nose somewhat rising in the middest. The whole compasse of her countenance somewhat long, but yet of admirable beauty; not so much in that which is termed the flower of youth, as in a most delightful compositione of majesty and modesty in equall mixture. Her vertues

were such as might suffice to make an Ethiopian beautifull: which, the more man knows and understands, the more he shall love and admire. Shee was of divine witt, as well for depth of judgment, as for quick conceite and speedy expeditione; of eloquence, as sweet in the utterance, soe ready and easy to come to the utterance; of wonderful knowledge, both in learning and affayres; skilfull not only in Latine and Greeke, but alsoe in divers foraigne languages."

COLT IN THE CAUCASUS.-An Eastern traveler tells a good story of Colt's pistol. In Daghestan, a young Lesghian chief, being severely wounded during one of the frequent razzias of the Russians, took refuge on a ruined salki, in order to apply bandages to his wounds. While thus employed, he was discovered by a party of twelve dismounted dragoons, who immediately gave chase on his taking flight. Being fleet of foot, for a short while he outran them, during which time, such of them as had their carbines loaded, fired at him ineffectually. Having crossed one of the flexible bridges, common in that country, and which was over a rapid tortent at the foot of a mountain, the fugitive, finding himself unable to proceed much farther, and having time to put his arms in order, stood at bay under a projecting rock. With yells of delight, and uplifted sabres, the Russians approached the bridge. The foremost nearing him cried, "Yield, dog!" "Not while I have twelve lives at my girdle," cried the undaunted mountaineer. The Russians in the rear laughed loudly at the boast; but he in advance fell dead, pierced through and through by a bullet, nearly at the feet of the Lesghian. The second soldier stumbled over his dead comrade, and, as he rose, received a shot which caused him to fall severely wounded. The next, seeing the same weapon, which had twice been discharged, still pointed, rushed on; but to the surprise of the Russians, a third shot was fired at him: untouched, however, he was about to cut down the Lesghian, when a fourth discharge scattered his brains on the rocky parapet, and his lifeless body tumbled in the torrent beneath. Three of the Russians had now fallen. "What demon pistol is this,

that speaks so often?" cried the survivors to each other. The Lesghian stood firm, merely folding his pelisse of sheep-skin round his left arm ready to receive a blow, a precaution not unneeded, since now two Russians abreast were on the point of assailing him. Certain of their prey, these advanced more cautiously than their predecessors. This time two deliberate shots brought them down right and left; each fell pierced near the region of the heart. The remaining soldiers were amazed. The Lesghian, faint with loss of blood, and feeling his strength fast ebbing, now drew forth another pistol, a movement unobserved by the enemy, and rapidly fired three shots at the group of Russians, some fifty yards distant at the other end of the bridge. Owing to his light being now dim, only one shot took effect, wounding one of the dragoons in the shoulder. "Let us fly," they cried; "it is the Evil Spirit of the mountains-he would kill our whole army." Accordingly, they precipitately fled, just as the Lesghian sank down exhausted at the foot of the rock. At a distance they ventured to look back. "It hath vanished in the mist," cried the superstitious Muscovites. The Lesghian chief was succored by some of his own people, and ere long recovered from his hurt, as did the wounded Russian. At his bridal feast, some four months after, the pistols, which were a pair of Colt's revolvers, and were a gift from an American traveler, Captain K—, to the youthful hero of the Caucasus, were handed round amid the general benedictions of the party. The bride is said even to have kissed them, saying, "Ah! me Dehemit, were all the brave Circassians armed like thee, there would not be so many tearful maidens and bereaved widows in Daghestan."

EFFECT OF FEAR.-Boachet, a French author, of the sixteenth century, states that the physicians at Montpelier, which was then a great school of medicine, had every year two criminals, the one living the other dead, delivered to them for dissection. He relates that on one occasion they tried what effect the mere expectation of death would produce upon a subject in perfect health, and in order to this experiment they told the gentleman (for such was his rank) who was placed at their discretion, that as the easiest mode of taking away his life, they would employ the means which Seneca had chosen for himself, and would therefore open his veins in warm water. Accordingly they covered his face, pinched his feet, without lancing them, and set them in a foot-bath, and then spoke to each other as if they saw that the blood was flowing freely, and life departing with it. The man remained motionless; and when, after a while, they uncovered his face, they found him dead.

COST OF WAR.-The Government of Great Britain spent in the last four years of the war with France the following sums:-In 1812, $517,107,690; in 1813, $604,763,285; in 1814, $584,219,445; in 1815, 582,455, 255. The expenditure during the war, from 1803 to 1815 inclusive, was $5,798,646, 280. This expenditure would have sufficed to supply all England with schools, churches,

De Sauley's discovery of the ruins of the "Cities of the Plain," excited no little interest throughout the civilized world a few months since. M. Van de Velde was induced to visit the locality, in order to verify the alleged fact. He has published two heavy volumes which will effectually allay the excited curiosity of the learned on the subject. M. Van de Velde says: "The plain exhibits an extent of gravel, chiefly of a gray color, diversified occasionally by rows of large stones, which generally run parallel to each other. Between these rows of stones grow various shrubs, such as are proper to this locality, especially one kind which bears a great resemblance to the tamarisk, but which, on closer examination, indicates a different botanical affinity. M. de Sauley crossed this plain twice, once from north to south along the sea-shore, and afterward from the north corner of the Salt Mountain to the Wadi Zuweirah. Here he gets quite excited. Without doubt this is the plain of Sodom, and the rows of stones are the remains of the city walls, and who knows what more! How little observation, thought I, is necessary to recognize, in these rows of stones among the gravel and in the rich vegetation, the course of torrents which in the winter time sweep down from the mountain gorges and overflow the plain! Nothing is clearer than this. Any one who has ever seen the dry course of a river in the desert has no difficulty in here tracing the different beds of the numerous streams, which during the rainy season wind through this plain. But what will not imagination do? We followed in the footsteps of M. de Sauley to Jebel Usdum. Accidentally we were kept for a considerable time on the north side of this mountain. One of our Bedouins, who knew well that we should have that day a very long journey, being ill, and so not feeling himself in a condition to accomplish it, attempted to conduct us by the east side of the Salt Mountain. At first I did not see through his design; but, as we came nearer to the mountain and began to have it on our left, his object could be no longer hid. My guides now swore with all sorts of oaths that there was no way to the west of the Salt Mountain; but you may easily understand that their oaths did not weigh much with me, and when they saw at last that I kept to my point, they gave way with the usual 'Insh'-Allah.' This circumstance meanwhile caused me to make a double march along the north side of the mountain, and I became thus fully convinced that whatever there may be on the plain, ruins there are not. That M. de Sauley should have found here not only the remains of buildings and cities, but positively those of Sodom, I declare I cannot attribute to any other source than the creation of his fancy."

Thus, then, it seems that the eager Frenchman mistook the beds of streams for the foundations of cities. Some of the English critics, however, seem indisposed to credit fully the observations of Van de Velde. The question is considered still an open one.

ELOQUENCE OF CHATHAM.-The remains of the eloquence of Chatham show it to have been of rare power, and its results prove still more its greatness. His power over parliament and the government was the proudest example of the despotism of talent to be found in the records of English statesmanship. His eloquent voice seemed to dominate over Europe itself, and to pronounce its destinies. His cotemporaries speak of his strength in debate as altogether marvelous as sublime. A London paper gives, from manuscript, a recently discovered letter of the famous Lord Littleton, the supposed Junius,

in which he speaks as follows of Chatham's eloquence :

"I have neither the gravity nor the importance of character necessary to govern in these wild and unruly times, and am sorry that with the Earl of Chatham died the genius of England. The majesty of his mind overawed everything. The world was silent before him. He alone intimidated the house of Bourbon, and so great was the terror of his name that the very year he died, on a report prevailing in France that he was to be again minister of England. the French immediately marched twenty battalions down to the coast, transported heavy cannon post to Brest, and seized all the peasants from the plow to assist in repairing the fortifications of the towns they imagined Lord Chatham would begin his administration by invading. When they found the rumor was false, they desisted from their works, marched their troops back to their garrisons, and thought Brest strong enough to repel the fleet of England, though too weak to resist the genius of William Pitt. This wonderful man was not less dreaded at home. I remember when, after an absence of two years, he came down to the House of Commons without any man's knowing his intentions, and knocked up by a single speech a whole administration. His invectives were terrible denunciations of vengeance, and accompanied as they were with an eye that shot pernicious fire into the heart of his opponents. They had a preternatural effect upon men. Hume Campbell, brother to Lord Marchmont, a cold, steady, interested Scotchman, (who disregarded words as much as any man,) was so scared by him in the House of Commons that he was suddenly seized, while Mr. Pitt was speaking, with a violent shivering fit, went home in a high fever, and died in a week afterward. I will stop here, for I am insensibly going on to something like memoirs of Lord Chatham. He sleeps now, but the poet's lyre is awake. It is in your hand, my good friend. Sound then the strings, celebrate his praise, and contrast the magnitude of his mind to the poor pusillanimity of modern statesmen, to the corruption of modern parliaments, and to the base Italian code of modern policy."

Just such a man, imperial, yes, and imperious too, with talent, do we need at this day in our own national legislature to rebuke and defy the insolent mediocrity or rather inferiority, which by substituting audacity for ability and billingsgate for eloquence, has degraded the national capital into a political kennel.

CHANNING, though himself grave if not morbid, had wholesome views of life. God, he says, who gave us our nature-who has constituted body and minds incapable of continued effortwho has implanted a strong desire for recreation after labor-who has made us for smiles much more than tears. who made laughter the most contagious of all sounds-whose Son hallowed a marriage feast by his presence and sympathy-who has sent the child from his creating hand to develop its nature by active sports, and who has endowed both young and old with a keen susceptibility of enjoyment from wit and humor-He who has thus formed us, cannot have intended us for a dull life, and cannot frown on pleasures which solace our fatigue and refresh our spirits for coming toils.

GRAY'S ELEGY.-The original MS. of this immortal poem was sold at auction in London lately. At a former sale (1845) it was purchased, together with the "Odes," by a Mr. Penn. He gave $500 for the Elegy alone. He was proud, says the London Athenæum, of his purchase-so proud, indeed, that binders were employed to inlay them on fine paper, bind them up in volumes of richly-tooled olive morocco, with silk linings, and finally inclose each volume in a case of plain purple morocco.

The order was carefully carried out, and the volumes were deposited at Stoke Pogis in the great house adjoining the grave of Gray. The MS. of the Elegy is full of verbal alterations, -it is the only copy known to exist-and is evidently Gray's first grouping together of the stanzas as a whole. As the "Elegy" is known by heart to nearly every Englishman, and we believe American, we shall give some of the readings. The established text we print in Roman type, the MS. readings in italics:—

Of such as wandering near her midnight bower stray too

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep
village

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
Forever sleep: the breezy call of

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn
Or chanticleer so shrill or

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share

that

Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn
Wrote
Carved
Large was his bounty and his soul sincere
heart

Or drew his frailties from their dread abode
Nor seek to draw them

There they alike in trembling hope repose
His frailties there

Here is the art of word-painting carried to perfection. Who does not feel with Waller ?

Poets lose half the praise they should have got,
Could it be known what they discreetly blot.

A TERRIBLE WOUND-OF THE IMAGINATION.Dr. Noble, in an analytic lecture at Manchester, England, "On the Dynamic Influence of Ideas," told a good anecdote of M. Boutibouse, a French savant, in illustration of the power of imagination. M. Boutibouse served in Napoleon's army, and was present at many engagements during the early part of last century. At the battle of Wagram, in 1809, he was engaged in the fray; the ranks around him had been terribly thinned by shot, and at sunset he was nearly isolated. While reloading his musket, he was shot down by a cannon ball. His impression was, that the ball had passed

through his legs below his knees, separating them from the thighs; for he suddenly sank down, shortened, as he believed, to the extent of about a foot in measurement. The trunk of the body fell backward on the ground, and the senses were completely paralyzed by the shock. Thus he lay motionless among the wounded and dead during the rest of the night, not daring to move a muscle, lest the loss of blood should be fatally increased. He felt no pain, but this he attributed to the stunning effect of the shock to the brain and nervous system. At early dawn he was aroused by one of the medical staff, who came round to help the wounded: "What's the matter with you, my good fellow?" said the surgeon. "Ah! touch me tenderly," replied M. Boutibouse, "I beseech you; a cannon ball has carried off my legs." The surgeon examined the limbs referred to, and then giving him a good shake, said, with a joyous laugh, "Get up with you-you have nothing the matter with you." M. Boutibouse immediately sprang up in utter astonishment, and stood firmly on the legs which he thought he had lost forever. "I felt more thankful," said M. Boutibouse, "than I had ever done in the whole course of my life before. I had not a wound about me. I had, indeed, been shot down by an immense cannon ball; but instead of passing through the legs, as I firmly believed it had, the ball had passed under my feet, and had plowed a hole in the earth beneath, at least a foot in depth, into which my feet suddenly sank, giving me the idea that I had been thus shortened by the loss of my legs." The truth of this story is vouched for by Dr. Noble.

IMMIGRATION. A statement of the immigrants arriving at this port during the four weeks commencing on the 25th of June, and ending on the 21st July, inclusive, as taken from the reports of the Custom-House officer, has been published by the Tribune. From this it appears that the total number which arrived was 26,773-an average of 6,693 per week, or nearly one thousand (956-5-28) per day. Thus Europe continues to pour in upon us, and in numbers which hardly admit of being rated. The calculations in our late editorial, entitled "Look at the Facts," fall altogether short of the actual facts. What will become of this land in a hundred years from to-day, unless our provisions for education and religion are vastly augmented beyond their present ratio?

"A short time since, Mr. Benjamin Moore, a worthy, industrious, hard-working resident of Manchester, opposite this city, while digging and removing from one of the recently laid out public streets a few cart-leads of hitherto undisturbed alluvium, for James Fisher, Esq., of that town, was so fortunate as to discover in the ferrugineous clay or earth, about two feet below the surface, near several water-worn round pieces of secondary sand-stone, what, at the time, he supposed to be simply a very pretty fragment of sparkling, trans