Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. III, No. XVII, October 1851

The London Spectator thinks it highly probable that the malcontents are masters of all the provinces south of the Yellow River, and have seized upon the great entrepot of Canton. This, it adds, would be a revolution; for Pekin, which derives its supplies of provisions by the great canal from those southern provinces, would be starved into submission; and the principal seat of foreign commerce would fall into the hands of a party more bigotedly hostile to intercourse with foreigners than even the Celestial Government. Nor is such a revolution either impossible or improbable. Our knowledge of Chinese history is dim and obscure; yet enough appears to show that the Mantchoo authority has never been so firmly established to the south as to the north of the Yellow River – that the purely Chinese element of society has always preponderated in the southern provinces. In Siam, too, changes of policy appear to be impending. The king who refused to treat with Sir James Brooke is dead; and a contested succession has been temporarily avoided by the simultaneous nomination of a king and a vice-king. The new king has always been remarkable for his disposition to cultivate the acquaintance and friendship of foreigners, and he is said to understand and even to write English. The institutions of the Chinese and Hindu-Chinese nations are thus shaken and sapped at the very time when the traders of Europe and America are making more vigorous and continuous efforts than at any former period to obtain a footing in them.

Twenty-three British seamen belonging to the ship Larpent, were wrecked over a year ago upon the coast of the Chinese island of Formosa. They were immediately set upon by the savage inhabitants, and all but three butchered in cold blood. These three were taken into servitude, and after about eight months' captivity made their escape in a boat to an American brig which happened to be passing.

Editor's Table

In the extreme western portion of the North American continent, and of the North American National Confederacy, there are now to be found, growing side by side, two of the most singular phenomena of the age. We allude to the new social and political organization, constituting the State of California, and the new theocracy, as it is assumed to be, of the Mormon Commonwealth or Church – the one the most decidedly secular of all known modern enterprises, the other the only example of the rise of a new religion, and of a distinctly new religious people in the 19th century. Mormonism, it is true, has some decidedly secular elements. In this respect it easily assimilates itself to the gross spirit of worldly enterprise by which it is surrounded, and even finds itself at home in the midst of the most turbulent scenes. But this is far from accounting for its wonderful success. It is also true, on the other hand, that the present age has been marked by the division and subdivision of religious denominations. Yet still, none of these come up to that idea or pretension of Mormonism, which seems now to have presented itself in the world for the first time since the days of Mohammed. Although, therefore, acknowledging Christianity and the Old Scriptures, just as Mohammed did, it is distinctly a new religion. It claims a new revelation, and a new prophet. It has a new law, a new spiritual polity, and a new mission. Instead of being merely a new interpretation of an old theology, it professes to have renewed the long-suspended intercourse with Heaven and the supernatural. Instead of presenting a new dispensation growing out of an old ecclesiastical history, to which it assumes to impart a new life, it has actually created a past history of its own, which, though severed from the main current of our common traditional Christianity, connects it back, through passages never before suspected or explored, with the early Jewish revelation – or that original fountain from which the Gospel and Mohammedanism may be said to have derived, the one its reality and its purity, the other the materials for its fanatical perversions.

Whatever may be the truth in respect to the real origin and authorship of the book of Mormon, there can be no doubt of its wonderful adaptedness to the purposes to which it has been applied. We can not agree with those who would deny to the work either genius or talent. The Koran bears with it that prestige of antiquity which always insures some degree of respect. It is written in a dead, and what is now regarded a learned language. It has its Oriental imagery, together with frequent allusions to what most interests us in Oriental romance. Above all, it has had its centuries of scholiasts and commentators, extracting the aroma as well as the dust of its assumed divinity. In short, there is about it a show of learning and "venerable antiquity," and yet, we do not hesitate to say it, Joe Smith, or whoever was its author, has made a book superior to that of the Arabian prophet; deeper in its philosophy, purer in its morality, and far more original. There are, doubtless, many faults both of style and language; but centuries hence may convert these into precious archaisms, and give to the bad Anglo-Saxon of the Mormon book all the interest which ages of scholiasts have imparted to what was once the irregular Arabic of the rude tribes of the desert.

It may startle some to be told, that Mormonism has actually pressed itself more upon the attention of the world than Christianity had done at the same age. We carry back into the early days of the Gospel's progress the clear light and outline of its later history. We can hardly realize that even for a century, or more, after its first promulgation, it was an object of little interest to the world, and that when it first began to demand a passing paragraph from the historian, it was only as an "execrabilis superstitio," creating a disturbance barely visible on the surface of society. Of course there is no intention, by any such remark, to make any comparison between the intrinsic merits of the two systems. A true believer in Jesus, and of "the truth as it is in Jesus," will never suffer himself to be disturbed by any parallel, real or seeming, between Christ and Socrates, or Christ and Mohammed, or Confucius, or the founder of any new religion, or of any pretended social reform, either in ancient or modern times. He can have no nervous fear of confounding the immeasurable difference between any such pretension and "that name which is above every other name." The strength and success of the counterfeit only adds lustre and assurance to the original. Neither does the great idea of a revelation suffer any detraction by being associated in thought with such attempts. The Koran only confirms the Gospel. It never would have been what it is without it. The false prophet never would have arisen had it not been for the true. All religious imposture and fanaticism may thus be regarded as involuntary witnesses to an absolute truth, of which they are but the frenzied caricatures. The grossest delusions only show, by their very extravagance, the indestructibleness of the religious principle in the human soul, and how it clings and ever must cling to the idea of some Divine revelation, some lifting of the vail, as the etymology of the word imports, which hangs so densely over man and nature.

There is a more inexplicable phenomenon than Mormonism or any false religion. It is the disposition manifested in some parts of the philosophical, and even professedly religious world, to depreciate, if not directly to deny the supernatural – to put as far away as possible, or to receive as the last allowable explanation of any difficulty, the thought of any direct communication from Heaven to earth. It is on this principle some would even interpret, not only present phenomena, but also all that during countless ages have left their mark upon our globe. On this principle another class would unspiritualize as far as they could, even the acknowledged Scriptures. But why should it be so? Why this strange delight in believing in the omnipotence and unchangeableness of a blind and unrelenting nature? What comfort has it for the soul, or what enlargement even for the intellect? What happiness in the thought of being bound in such an adamantine chain, even if we are compelled to admit its stern reality! It may be, peradventure, that philosophy here is in the right, but, if we may employ the paradox, her reverence for nature must certainly seem most unnatural. Nature, even our nature, longs for some Divine or supernatural communications. For this "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together until now." The wonder, then, is not that there have been in the world so many mythical accounts of Divine intercourse, but that there has been so little of the reality. Why does not God speak to us here? Why has "He made darkness his pavilion round about him?" Why "cometh He not out" more frequently "from the hiding-place of his power?" Why has He ever been called – by Homer, and Hesiod, and Orpheus, as well as in the Bible – "The Dweller in the cloud?" Why does not our Father's voice oftener break the fearful stillness of nature, and give us that evidence of His existence, His government, and His providence, without which nature is but a gloomy prison-house, while life is but a smothered effort to escape from its terrible immutability, and breathe the freedom of a spiritual and supernatural atmosphere? Is it said that He is always speaking – that the Great Cause of causes is always exhibiting itself in its effects? But what comfort in this? It speaketh not to us – it manifests no knowledge of our present thought, of our present individual wants. The voice that is alike in all things, and comes alike to all things, we can not distinguish from nature herself. The true ground for marvel, then, is not that men are led astray by false prophets, but that such vast multitudes should be so utterly immersed in nature and worldliness, "caring for none of these things," and finding in such phenomena as Millerism and Mormonism, only occasion for insane merriment, instead of deep religious and philosophical inquiry.

The indestructibleness of the religious principle in the human soul! This is the great lesson read to us by such events. Even this nineteenth century with all its secularity, has not wholly drowned it. It breaks out in the midst of every form of worldliness. When untaught in respect to the true path, it follows the wildest imposture; and, as though in awful derision of the inability of the mere secular spirit ever to satisfy the deepest human wants, a Kingdom of the Saints settles itself in nearest contiguity to what would seem to be the exclusive territory of Mammon.

We can only call attention to this strange phenomenon without going into any discussion of the causes of its remarkable success. As we have said, it is the only case of a distinctly new religion since the days of Mohammed. Yet still it may be compared with other anomalous religious movements that have characterized the present century. Most of these have already had their growth and decline. Some that started with more enthusiasm than has ever been claimed for the Mormons, have, for years, been dying out, or only manifesting an outward and formal existence. On the other hand, too, a similar fate has attended most of the schemes of Socialists, and of those reformers who have relied solely on some doctrine of political economy, while ignoring, as far as they could, any recognition of a supernatural religionism. In distinction from both these, Mormonism has flourished because it has possessed the element of vitality which was respectively wanting to each. The religious sects to which we have alluded (and we mean of course such as may be justly characterized as unscriptural delusions) have been too unworldly for success. They have lacked the secular element. Schemes of mere social reform, on the other hand, have been dead from the beginning. They have been wanting in that vitality which alone can come from a real or pretended connection with a future life, and a supernatural world. Mormonism professes to wield both powers. Whatever may be thought of the first founders of the sect, the multitudes who from all parts of the United States, and from England, and even from the Continent, are now crowding to the Salt Lake and the modern Canaan, give evidence of a power of tremendous reality, however much it may be above the comprehension of the shallow witling, or the mere secular political economist. The cause must have a universality in some way corresponding to the wide effect it is producing. But be it what it may, the lesson taught is most timely as well as important. It is, we repeat – and it will bear to be repeated —the indestructibleness of the religious principle in the human soul. If this have not the true nourishment, it will feed on falsehood; but nourishment and life of some kind it must have. The most secular age, instead of destroying, only causes it to burst out in some new and monstrous form. And even in this idea there is light and consolation for true faith. It derives new evidence from every spurious manifestation. The religious principle can not be wholly annihilated —

Merses profundo pulchrior evenit.

Let all worldly causes combine to drive it seemingly from the earth – let the edifice of supernatural belief be leveled with the ground, it would only be the signal for reconstruction. Take away the true, or quench it in the worldly spirit, and some form of false belief will start up in its place. There will be faith in the earth– there will be a sacred book – there will be a ritual, or system of worship, ever maintaining itself as a symbol of the inextinguishable trust in the reality of "things unseen and eternal." The naturalizing philosophy may endure, and even be strong as the antagonist of a revealed supernaturalism. But take away the latter, and the former falls with it. Its success is suicidal. Its triumph is its own utter defeat. All true interest in nature and science must expire, when every where the soul ceases to acknowledge any thing higher than either. Without a return to a true faith, spiritual delusions, on the one hand, or the grossest secularity and sensualism, on the other, will be the only alternative. And, if we must come to this, can any thinking mind have difficulty in deciding where we should look for the truest exhibition of human dignity – in Utah or California – in the Land of the Saints, or in the Land of Gold?

And there was evening —and there was morning – one day. (Gen. i. 5.) Why has the inspired historian placed the night first? It must doubtless be because it actually came first in the order of our present creation. What was this first night but the long chaos of darkness that covered the face of the deep, and over which the Spirit brooded when the command came forth for the first morning to appear – when God said, Let there be light on that dark world, and immediately light was there? But still, night was first, and hence in all the traditions that have sprung from this account it has ever been an object of religious reverence. In the old mythologies Night is the mother of day; and hence the epithets that poetry has ever conferred upon her – Sacred Night, Divine Night, Holy Night, Most Venerable and Religious Night. But not only has she been regarded as the mythological mother of creation, but as ever the nurse of the purest emotion and the truest thoughts. On this account the Greek poets gave her that beautiful name Euphrone– indicating the season of good feeling – the hour of hope, of calm yet joyous contemplation. It is true, the inspired description of the heavenly state says, There shall be no night there. But in our present imperfect being, the idea of the highest earthly bliss would be marred by its absence from the picture. As yet we can not dispense with the shade. The

Sacred, high, eternal noon

is for beings of another order, and another life; and however much we may admire the pure sublimity of this fine line of Doddridge, we feel that we must be endowed with new emotions before we could truly enjoy the never to be remitted splendor of such a state as it describes.

Although affected by particular circumstances, and expressed with great variety of imagery, there has been a wonderful harmony in the spiritual conceptions which the contemplation of night has ever called forth. We have, therefore, thought that it might interest our readers to present a few of the most striking night scenes from ancient and modern poets. The first from our port-folio, of course, is Homer's. The selection is from the close of the eighth book of the Iliad. Its introduction partakes of the warlike character of the poem, but softened into that holy calmness which the scene ever assumes, whatever may be the circumstances in which it is presented. We give Pope's splendid translation, although some might prefer the more accurate version of Cowper.

As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;Around her throne the vivid planets roll,And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole,O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,And tip with silver every mountain's head;Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,A flood of glory bursts from all the skies.

But neither Pope nor Cowper can be said to have caught the spirit of the original as well as the old ballad version of Chapman.

As when about the silver moon, when air is free from winde,And stars shine cleare to whose sweet beams high prospects and the browsOf all steep hills and pinnacles thrust up themselves for shows;And even the lowly vallies joy to glitter in their sight —When the unmeasured firmament bursts to disclose her light,And all the signs in heaven are seen that glad the shepherd heart.

Apollonius Rhodius, in the Argonautica, presents a greater diversity of imagery. He has not in view, like Homer, the unity of a single scene, but calls up similar emotions by a dispersed variety of the most impressive pictures. We present a translation, which, if it have no other merit, may at least be said to be almost word for word —

Now Night had thrown her shadow o'er the earth.Far out at sea the sailors stood and gazed,On wheeling Arctos and Orion's stars.The traveler longed to hear the warder's voiceInvite to rest; and even the mother's eyesThat drowsy hour pressed downward, as she watchedBy her dead child – the watch-dog's voice was mute;The city's thronging noise had died away,And stillness reigned o'er all the shaded realm;Save in Medea's restless soul —

Virgil closely imitates the Greek poet in the designed contrast, if not in his scenery. As we have not troubled them with the Greek, our fair readers, and others, we hope, will pardon us for putting on our page the Latin. Even those may appreciate its exceedingly liquid flow, who are compelled to resort to the translation for its meaning.

Nox erat, et placidum carpebat fessa soporemCorpora per terras, sylvæque et sæva quiêrantÆquora: cum medio volvuntur sidera lapsu:Cum tacet omnis ager, pecudes, pictæque volucres,Quæque lacus late liquidos, quæque aspera dumisRura tenent, somno positæ sub node silenti,Lenibant curas, et corda oblita laborumAt non infelix Dido —Æneid, Lib. iv.'Twas dead of night when wearied bodies closeTheir eyes in balmy sleep, and soft repose.The winds no longer whisper through the woods,Nor murmuring tides disturb the gentle floods.The stars in silent order moved around,And peace with downy wings was brooding on the ground.The flocks, and herds, and particolored fowl,Which haunt the woods, or swim the seedy pool,Stretched on the quiet earth securely lay,Forgetting the past labors of the day.All but unhappy Dido —

Dryden is very far from doing justice to Virgil in the translation of this passage, and yet, we must say, that the original, much as it has been praised, falls greatly short of the exquisite description by Apollonius. How much does that most impressive image in the sixth line of the Grecian poet exceed any effect produced by Virgil's pictæ volucres, or "particolored fowl," however ornate the language, and liquid the melody of his highly wrought lines.

But Byron – shall we risk the criticism – Byron, in our judgment, surpasses every example we have quoted, and even had we added, as we might have done, Shakspeare and Milton to the list.

'Twas midnight – On the mountains brownThe cold round moon shone deeply downBlue rolled the waters, blue the skySpread like an ocean hung on high;Bespangled with those isles of light,So widely, spiritually bright.Who ever gazed upon them shining,And turned to earth without repining!The sea on either shore lay there,Calm, clear, and azure as the air;And scarce the foam the pebbles shook,That murmured meekly as the brook.The winds were pillowed on the waves;The banners drooped along their staves;And that deep silence was unbroke,Save where the watch his signal spoke;Save where the steed neighed oft and shrill,And echo answered from the hill.Siege of Corinth.

Our concluding example is from the Scriptures. We challenge not for it a superiority simply on the ground of its inspiration. Every reader may judge for himself how immeasurably it excels any thing of the kind to be found in ancient or modern poetry. How full of natural sublimity, and, at the same time, how profoundly impressive the moral lesson of this night scene from Job!

In thoughts from visions of the night,When deep sleep falleth upon men,Fear came upon me, and trembling,And made all my bones to shake.Then a spirit passed before my face;The hair of my flesh rose up.It stood. An image was before mine eyes,And yet I could not discern the form thereof.There was silence —And yet I heard a voice – saying —Shall a mortal be more just than God?Shall a man be more pure than his Maker?

We hear often of popular fallacies. Books have been written on them. But there are also learned fallacies, and among these we know of no one more common than that which prevails respecting the word education. It is quite usual with lecturers and essayists to derive a profound philosophical meaning from the bare etymology of the term. It is from educo, they tell us, to lead or draw out. It means the drawing out or developing the faculties. It is the bringing out the unwrought man, like the polished statue from the rough block of marble. All sorts of changes are rung upon the word. With some it is the educing of the individuality, with others, of the humanity. Others again talk much of drawing out the ideas, and that, too, without any previous exact instruction, or the furnishing of what might be styled the prepared material of thought – about as wise a course as to attempt to develop, or draw out the faculties of a nail-making machine, without ever thinking of putting any well-wrought iron into it. Now, all this is pedantic nonsense. The old Roman Roundheads, from whom the term is derived, never dreamed of any such transcendental conception. The word, in its primary sense, simply means nursing, fostering, rearing. Hence is it afterward applied to knowledge and discipline. It is educed from the simple conception of holding the child by the hand, and leading him forth when he first begins to walk. From the same primitive thought comes the word pedagogue, which simply means, one who leads a boy, and was first applied to the slave, or servant, who conducted the Athenian child to and from school. It would, however, be hardly worth our while to show the fallacy of this very common etymological deduction, were it not sometimes made the ground of very false ideas. The old view, although it have no great philosophy, will be found to be the true one. It is to hold a child up, and lead him forth by the hand, before you set him to walk alone by himself, under pretense of developing his faculties, either of thinking or of locomotion.

Every man has two parents, four grand-parents, eight great-grand-parents, sixteen great-great-grand-parents, &c., &c., &c. If we reckon 30 years to a generation, and carry on the above series to the time of the Norman conquest, it will be found that each one of us must have had at that period, no less than 32,000,000 of ancestors. Now, making all allowance for the crossing of genealogical lines, and consequently for the same person being in many of the intersections, still there will remain a number sufficient, at that period, to cover the whole Norman and Anglo-Saxon race. Whatever, therefore, was then noble, or pious, or princely, or even kingly, stands somewhere in the line of ancestry of the most ignoble and plebeian among us. Each man of the present day may be almost certain of having had, not only earls (and it may be bishops), but even crowned heads among his progenitors. And so also may we be almost assured that the highest families of that period have now lineal representatives in persons so low in the social scale, that all the sounding lines of heraldry would fail to fathom the depth of their obscurity. In less than a thousand years, the blood of Victoria inevitably mingles with that of some of the most ignoble of the earth. Carry the calculation further back, and we soon pass beyond any population that ever existed on our globe. A thousand years from the present time brings the number up to 1,024,000,000. Two or three centuries more carries it beyond a thousand billions, and long before we arrive at the period of our world's creation, it would have reached a number surpassing all powers of easy enumeration. It is a consequence, too, of the same view, that a thousand years hence, each man who has now an ordinary family of children, will probably have a representative some way of his blood in each one of 30,000,000 of persons; and that these will be of all conditions, high and low, rich and poor, unless, as may be the case, some system of social philosophy may long before that have swept all distinctions from our world.