easantry of their native countries.
They are all clownish and brutal. Their women work in the fields.
In their houses and gardens there is no symptom of taste, or of the
recollection of former and more innocent days; while in every cottage
owned by Americans there is visible, at least, a clock, or a pair of
China vases, or a rude picture, which once held a similar position in
some farm-house in New England.

It is not intended to discuss here the cardinal points of the Mormon
faith, for the subject is too extensive for the limits of this article.
A great misapprehension, however, prevails concerning polygamy, that it
was one of the original doctrines of the Church. On the contrary, it was
expressly prohibited in the Book of Mormon, which declares:--

"Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which
thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord. ... Wherefore hearken to
the word of the Lord: There shall not any man among you have save it
be one wife, and concubines he shall have none; for I, the Lord God,
delight in the chastity of women."--p. 118.

Up to this date, there have been four eras in the history of polygamy
among the Mormons: the first, from about 1833 to 1843, during which it
was practised stealthily only by those Church leaders to whom it was
considered prudent to impart the secret; the second, from 1843 to 1852,
during which its existence was known to the Church, but denied to the
world; the third, from 1852 to 1856, during which it was left to the
discretion of individuals whether to adopt its practice or not; and the
fourth, since 1856, when its acceptance was inculcated as essential to
happiness in this world and salvation in the next. It was the inevitable
tendency of Mormonism, like every other religious delusion, from the
advent of John of Leyden to that of the Spiritualists, to disturb the
natural relation of the sexes under the Christian dispensation. The
mystery surrounding the subject constituted the most attractive charm of
the religion, both to the initiated and to those who were seeking to be
admitted to the secrets of the Endowment,--for the Endowed alone possess
the privilege of a plurality of wives. But until the community had
become firmly fixed in Utah, no one dared to justify or even to proclaim
the doctrine. At the time of the passage of the Organic Act of the
Territory, in the autumn of 1850, and repeatedly during the next
two years, prominent Mormons at Washingt