to turn the rustling pages carefully, and feel startled if a door swung to in the quiet house, as if I were eavesdropping; but soon I ceased to hear, absorbed in her letter, which began as the first did. "DEAR UNCLE, "To-day I begged John to write, and ask you to come here. I could not write you since I came here but that once, though your letters have been my great comfort, and I added a few words of entreaty to his, because I am dying, and it seems as if I must see you before I die; yet I fear the letter may not reach you, or you may be sick; and for that reason I write now, to tell you how terrible a necessity urged me to persuade you to such a journey. I can write but little at a time, my side is so painful; they call it slow-consumption here, but I know better; the heart within me is turned to stone, I felt it then- Ah! you see my mind wandered in that last line; it still will return to the old theme, like a fugue tune, such as we had in the Plainfield singing-school. I remember one that went, 'The Lord is just, is just, is just.'-Is He? Dear Uncle, I must begin at the beginning, or you never will know. I wrote you from St. Louis, did I not? I meant to. From there, we had a dreary journey, not so bad to Fort Leavenworth, but after that inexpressibly dreary, and set with tokens of the dead, who perished before us. A long reach of prairie, day after day, and night after night; grass, and sky, and graves; grass, and sky, and graves; till I hardly knew whether the life I dragged along was life or death, as the thirsty, feverish days wore on into the awful and breathless nights, when every creature was dead asleep, and the very stars in heaven grew dim in the hot, sleepy air-dreadful days! I was too glad to see that bitter inland sea, blue as the fresh lakes, with its gray islands of bare rock, and sparkling sand shores, still more rejoiced to come upon the City itself, the rows of quaint, bare houses, and such cool water-sources, and, over all, near enough to rest both eyes and heart, the sun-lit mountains, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.' "I liked my new house well. It was too large for our need, but pleasanter for its airiness, and the first thing I did, was to plant a little hop-vine, that I had brought all the way with such great care, by the east porch. I wanted something like Plainfield in my home. I don't know why I linger so, I must write faster, for I grow weak all the time. "I liked the City very well for awhile; the neighbors were kind, and John more than that, I could not be unhappy with him—I thought. We had a pretty garden, for another man had owned the house before us, and we had not to begin every thing. Our next door neighbor, Mrs. Colton, was good and kind to me, so was her daughter Lizzy, a pretty girl, with fair hair, very fair. I wonder John liked it after mine. The first great shock I had was at a Mormon meeting. I cannot very well remember the ceremony, because I grew so faint; but I would not faint away lest some one should see me. I only remember that it was Mrs. Colton's husband with another wife being "sealed" to him, as they say here. You don't know what that means, Uncle Field; it is one part of this religion of Satan, that any man may have, if he will, three or four wives, perhaps more. I only know that shameless man, with grown daughters, and the hair on his head snow-white, has taken two, and his own wife, a firm believer in this faith! looks on calmly, and lives with them in peace. I know that, and my soul sickened with disgust, but I did not fear; not a thought, not a dream, not a shadow of fear crossed me. I should have despised myself forever if the idea had stained my soul; my husband was my husband,-minebefore God and man! and our child was in heaven; how glad I was she could never be a Mormon! "I was sorry for Mrs. Colton, though she did not need it, and when I saw John leaning over their gate, or smoking in the porch with the old man, I thought he felt so, too, and I was glad to see him more sociable than ever he was in the States. After awhile he did not smoke, but talked with Elder Colton, and then would come home and expound out of the book of Mormon to me. I was very glad to have him earnest in his religion, but I could not be. Then he grew very thoughtful, and had a silent fit, but I took no notice of it, though I think now he meant to leave me, but I began to pine a little for home, and when I worked in the garden, and trained the vines about our verandah, I used to wish he would help me as he did Lizzy Colton, but I still remembered how good he was to pity and help them. "Oh fool! yet, I had rather be a fool over again than have imagined-that I am glad of, even now-I did not once suspect. "But one day I remember every little thing in that day-even the slow ticking of the clock, as I tied up my hop-vine; and after that I went into the garden, and sat down on a little bench under the grape-trellis, and looked at the mountains. How beautiful they were! all purple in the shadow of sunset, and the sky golden green above them, with one scarlet cloud floating slowly upward: I hope I shall never see a red cloud again. Presently, John came and sat by me, and I laid my head on his shoulder; I was so glad to have him there-it cured my home-sickness; once or twice he began to say something, and stopped, but I did not mind it. I wanted him to see a low line of mist creeping down a cañon in the mountains, and I stood up to point it out; so he rose, too, and in a strange, hurried way, began to say something about the Mormon faith, and the duties of a believer, which I did not notice either very much-I was so full of admiring the scarlet cloud-when, like a sudden thunder-clap at my ear, I heard this quick, resolute sentence: And so, according to the advice and best judgment of the Saints, Elizabeth Colton will be sealed to me, after two days, as my spiritual wife.' "Then my soul fled out of my lips, in one cry-I was dead-my heart turned to a stone, and nothing can melt it! I did not speak, or sigh, but sat down on the bench, and John talked a great deal; I think he rubbed my hands and kissed me, but I did not feel it. I went away, by-and-by, when it was dark, into the house and into my room. I locked the door and looked at the wall till morning, then I went down and sat in a chair till night; and I drank, drank, drank, like a fever. All the time cold water, but it never reached my thirst. John came home, but he did not dare touch me; I was a dead corpse, with another spirit in it not his wife-she was dead, and gone to heaven on a bright cloud. I remember being glad of that. "In two days more he had a wife, and I was not his any longer. I staid up stairs when he was in the house, and locked my door, till, after a great many days, I began to feel sorry for him. Oh! how sorry! for I knew-I know he will see himself some day with my eyes, but not till I die. Then I found my lips full of blood one morning, and that pleased me, for I knew it was a promise of the life to come: now I should go to heaven, where there aren't any Mormons. "I believe, though, people were kind to me all the time; for I remember they came and said things to me, and one shook me a little to see if I felt; and one woman cried. I was glad of that, for I couldn't cry. However, after three months, I was better: worse, John said one day, and he brought a doctor, but the man knew as well as I did so he said nothing at all, and gave me some herb tea;-tell Aunt Martha that. "Then I could walk out of doors, but I did not care to; only once I smelt the hop-blossoms, and that I could not bear, so I went out and pulled up my hopvine by the roots, and laid it out, all straight, in the fierce sunshine: it died directly. In the winter John had another wife sealed to him; I heard somebody say so; he did not tell me, and if he had I could not help it. I found he had taken a little adobe house for those two, and I knew it was out of tenderness for my feelings he did so. Oh! Uncle Field! perhaps he has loved me all this time? I know better, though, than that! Spring came, and I was very weak, and I grew not to care about any thing; so I told John he could bring those two women to this house if he wished: I did not care, only nobody must ever come into my room. He looked ashamed, and pleased, too; but he brought them, and nobody ever did come into my room. By-and-by Elizabeth Colton brought a little baby down stairs, and its name was Clara. Poor child! poor little Mormon child! I hope it will die some time before it grows up; only I should not like it to come my side of heaven, for it had blue eyes like John's. "Then I grew more and more ill, and now I am really dying, and no letter has come from you! It takes so long three whole months, and I have been more than a year in the house with John Henderson and the two women. I know I shall never see you, but I must speak. I must, even out of the grave; and I keep hearing that old fugue. The Lord is just, is just, is just; the Lord is just and good!' Is He? I know He Field! you must pray for John! you must! I cannot die and leave him in his sins, his delusion: he does not think it is sin, but I know it. Pray! pray! dear Uncle: don't be discouraged do not fear-he will be undeceived some time; he will repent, I know! The Lord is just, and I will pray in heaven, and I will tell Nelly to, but you must. It says in the Bible, the prayer of a righteous man;' and oh! I am not righteous! I should not have married him; it was an unequal yoke, and I have borne the burden; but I loved him so much! Uncle Field, I did not keep myself from idols. Pray! I shall be dead, but he lives. Pray for him, and, if you will, for the little child--because —I am dying. Dear Nelly!—" "Are you blotting my letter, young man?" said Parson Field, at my elbow, as I deciphered the last broken, trembling line, of Ada's story. "Here I have been five minutes, and you did not hear me!" I really had blotted the letter! SHOULD WE FEAR THE POPE? ONE of the strong impelling causes of the current movement against foreigners is, the hereditary aversion of Protestants to the Roman Church. It is alleged, that the doctrines of that Church assert the right of the Pope to interfere in the temporal affairs of kingdoms and states, while they demand for him the exclusive allegiance of its members; and, consequently, that no one professing those doctrines can yield an honest allegiance to any other power. We propose to inquire how far these positions are true; and, if true, to what extent, and in what way, we ought to resist their dangers. Its Before doing so, it may be proper to premise, that we have not been educated to any overweening estimate of the claims of the Catholic Church. On the contrary, our studies, observations, and general habits of thought, have led us into convictions decidedly and utterly hostile to its theories of government as well as to its creeds. It seems to us a singular mixture of fanaticism, tyranny, cunning and devout religion. We are sensible, too, of its many means of influence, and of the vast prestige with which it addresses itself both to the imagination and reason of men. venerable age, connecting it with the most ancient and splendid civilizations, Oriental, Grecian, Roman, and feudal; but, surviving them all, amid the fiercest tempests of time, as the pyramids have triumphed over the sand-storms of the desert, where the hundred-gated cities are laid in ruins,-its marvelous organization, combining the solidest strength with the most flexile activity, conciliating the wildest fanatical zeal with the coolest intellectual cunning, adapting it to every age, nation, and exigency, and enabling it to pursue its designs with continuous and varied forces; its imposing ceremonies and pantomimes, which seem like mummery to the stranger, but to the initiated are signs of the mighty conquests it has achieved over the mythologies, the rites, and the persecutions of antiquity, as well as promises of the consoling grace which will again sustain it, should the hand of the enemy drive it once more into the catacombs and the caves; its luxurious, yet discriminating, patronage of art, which has preserved to us so much of all that is best in art, in the touching music, the lovely paintings, and the sublime cathedrals of the middle-age; and, above all, the unquestionable ability of its priests, with the long line of noble and beautiful spirits, Abelards, Pascals, and Fenelons, who have illustrated history, by their culture, their piety and their geniusthese are elements of greatness and power, which it would be folly as well as blindness in any one to overlook or deride. But, as we are convinced, also, that there are influences stronger than these, the influences of truth.-of the soul of man,-of the spirit of the age, in its present developments,-of the providence of God, which has established a moral order in history, we are not dismayed by the amount of its ecclesiastical pretension, nor disheartened by any seeming facility or splendr in its temporary successes. Least of all, shall we allow ourselves to be betrayed, by the chronic terrors of Protestants, into an unjust judgment of Catholics, and the consequent perpetration of political wrong. We are too familiar with the history of religious controversy to be hurried away by the furious zeal of agitators, who regard it as their special mission to arouse the world to a proper dread of the abuses of Popery. They are sincere, we have no doubt; but it is the sincerity of partisans, not of judges. They have worked their impatience of error up to that inflammatory pitch, where conviction becomes passion. Of tolerable selfcomplacency and quietude, in other respects, they are apt to be shaken out of their shoes when the subject of the "Scarlet Woman" is broached. It has all the effect upon them-we say it with reverence of the red-rag upon some imperious turkey, who, straightway, loses his solemn port and dignity, and rushes wildly to the battle. Even the more temperate polemics. on the Protestant side of this controversy, do not always restrain their ardor at judgment-heat. Having convinced themselves that Rome-not ecclesiasticism in general, but the particular branch of it called Rome-is the great Anti-Christ of Scripture, they incontinently belabor her with every variety of Scriptural reprobation. All the mon strous types of apocalyptic zoology, the beasts with seven heads and ten horns, the red and black horses, the eagles, the calves, and the fiery flying serpents, are made to find in her their living resemblance, while she is loudly proclaimed to be the man of perdition, -the mother of harlots,-the mystic Babylon, who makes the nations "drunk with the wine of the wrath of her fornications."* It happens, unfortunately for the Church, that it is not difficult to give plausibility to these views, and, to some extent, a justification of reactionary hatreds, from the records of history. Ecclesiastical annals, (and the same is true, perhaps, of all other annals,) tried by the standard of existing opinions, are so full of whatever is insolent in assumption, corrupt in morals, cunning and treacherous in fraud, and detestable in tyranny, that a mere tyro, with a case to make out, might draw pictures from them that would frighten a college of cardinals, and much more a conclave of credulous zealots. Dip into these annals anywhere, but especially into what relates to the doings from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, and how much wickedness of every kind you meet! What audacity, licentiousness, superstition, ignorance, fraud, uproar, and cruel ferocity of persecution! The dread power of the Papacy, as it is described in the popular histories, seems to bestride those ages, like a gigantic spectre of the Brocken. It rises before us as something awful, mysterious, and desolating. Removed, as we are by many generations, from the scenes of its action, we still see the flash of its lightnings, and still hear the roar of its thunders, as the bolts fall swift and terrible about the heads of emperors and kings. In its quietest times, our eyes are haunted with visions of bloodyhands; the air is sultry with a feeling of oppression; and the soul, in its recoil from the gloom and sorrow that darkens and sobs around it, loses sense of the true proportions of things, and fancies that all was evil then, and nothing good. But, take up any party or principle, in an unfriendly spirit, to trace its affinities among the parties and principles of former times, and immediately you may place it in disreputable company. Thus, you may illustrate monarchy by the excesses of the Oriental kings or the Roman Cesars; you may make aristocracy responsible for the nobles of the middle ages; and democracy for the peasant-wars and French revolutions of a later day. A person, opposed to the Church of England, might say that it is still an unrepealed canon with her that papists and dissenters may be choked to death for their errors. Another, opposed to Calvinism, would show Calvin, Beza, and Melancthon urging the incremation of Servetus. A third would tell us of the Huguenots roasting papal priests, while they were themselves singed with the fires of St. Bartholomew; or of the Scotch parliament, with eight thousand Scotchmen dead at the hands of the Stuarts, decreeing death against the profession of Episcopacy; or, of the good Puritans, flying to the wilderness to escape and to establish spiritual despotism. In short, no sect or party can look with entire complacency upon the deeds of its ancestors, and no sect or party has a right to interpret the great lessons of history in a narrow, sectarian spirit. Now, it seems to us, that the Catholics are criticised too entirely in this one-sided way. Their opponents, drawing a drag-net through the impure streams of the middle-ages, bespatter them with all the rubbish that the cast brings up. It is forgotten that those ages were ages, in many respects, of the grossest barbarism and blindness; that anarchy and outrage reigned everywhere; that opinion was unformed and authorities at war; and that if the conduct of the hierarchy, stretching across such long periods of general violence, exhibits much that is rapacious, cruel, and malignant, it was often redeemed by the valuable services which the same hierarchy rendered to the cause of learning, of art, of social discipline, of popular progress, and European unity. The representations, therefore, which dwell upon the evils of those times exclusively, are violent daubs or grotesque caricatures, and not historical pictures. In this application, however, of the great symbols of the Apocalypse to actual events, instead of spiritual truths, they have the illustrious precedent of Dante, Petrarch, Machiavelli, and some, even, who lived in the previous century. t See Arnold's Miscellaneous Works, page 188, Appleton's edition. |