The Express.
London, England, 1861-08-14 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

A Journey to Great Etait Lake City. By JEri.is
RIMY and Jumon BIENCHLST, M.A. With a
Sketch of the History, Religion, and Customs of
the Mormons ; and an Introduction on the Reli-
gious Movement in the United States. By J.
Itrwr. Two vols., with Engravings, dm. London :
W. Jeffs. 1861.

The Mormon doctrines are sufficiently well
known ; but we must refer to the work before us
as by far the most complete and reliable history of
the Latter-day Saints. It is unnecessary to lay
any exposition of their strange faith before the
reader Lit will be better to give rather the opinion
which M. Rimy has formed upon the essential
points. As to polygamy, he finds all the women,
and some of them ladies too, avowing their ap-
proval of it, though he suspects they were not quite
true to their own hearts sometimes in saying so. One
confessed she should always like to be the first wife.
Auother held a long,. serious, and quite physiologi-
cal argument with hint in favour of polygamy. The
system appears to be obeyed most rigidly, and any
infractions upon it are severely punished, even to
death for adultery. Society is unusually chaste and
moral, he declares, and the public decorum is per-
fectly maintained in every respect, according to the
ha* of Mormon that is. Polygamy was husk re-,
vealed to Joseph in 1843 ; he first preached about
it, and then told the elders to acquaint his wife
Emma that he was "to do the works of Abraham,"
and that she must "receive all the virgins who have
been bestowed upon my servant Joseph." She
thought differently, however, and actually burnt the'
sacred book. The effects M. Rtbiny observed are that
there is the same excess of female children over'
males as amongst the Mussulman polygamists.
The mortality of the children, too, is very great.
Joseph Smith has only one surviving child, and
Brigham only about thirty. The Mormon boys are
said to be certainly not patterns of virtue, neither,
are the girls models of candour and innocence.
Their education is very deficient, and the college of
the city is a mere pretence. The women are, M. Rimy
thinks, generally superior in talent and education
to the men, and accomplishments are by no means
rare. Of the 3,017 polygamist. in Deseret, 1,400
have more than one and less than four wives, 1,100
have four, 730 have five, and 387 have seven and
upwards.
M. Italy esteems the Mormons as better people
than their system. The vet" liberty which they
have struck for he thinks will undermine them ;
and the whole doctrines contain the seeds of
dissolution. Mormonism will either vanish or be-
come transformed by dilution and washing out of
the poisonous principle. According to M. Rimy :
" The moment that discussion finds its way into
the community that Smith founded, and the light
of truth is made to flash upon its origin, it will be
consumed to ashes, and its dust scattered to the
winds." When, however, we are told that there
are no less than 600 Mormon missionaries in every
part of the world, and that the number of prose-
lytes is certainly more than 100,000, we see no signs
of decay cr lack of energy, though in the end we
believe with M. Rimy that the old and well-tried
conventionalities of life will prevail iu the New
World as they do with us.