THOSE among us who are not too young to have had "Evenings at Home"
for a schoolday companion and instructor will remember the story called
"Eyes and No Eyes" and its moral. They will remember that, of the two little
boys who accomplished precisely the same walk at the same time, one saw all
manner of delightful and wonderful things, while the other saw nothing whatever
that was worth recollection or description. The former had eyes prepared to
see, and the other had not; and that made all the difference. I have to confess
that, during a recent visit to Salt Lake City--- a visit lasting nearly as many days
as that out of which my friend, Hepworth Dixon, made the better part of a vol-
ume--- I must have been in the condition of the dull little reprobate who had no
eyes to see the wonders which delighted his companion. For, so far as the city
itself, its streets and its structures, are concerned, I really saw nothing in partic-
ular. A muddy little country town, with one or two tolerably decent streets,
wherein a few handsome stores are mixed up with old shanties, is not much to
see in any part of the civilized world. Other travellers have seen a wondrous
sight on the very same spot. They have seen a large and beautiful city, with
spacious, splendid streets, shaded by majestic trees and watered by silvery cur-
rents flowing in marble channels ; they have seen a city combining the cleanli-
ness and activity of young America with the picturesqueness and dignity of the
Orient; a city which would be beautiful and wonderful anywhere, but which,
raised up here on the bare bosom of the desert, is a phenomenon of apparently
almost magical creation. Naturally, therefore, they have gone into raptures over
the energy, and industry, and aestheticism of the Mormons ; and, even while con-
demning sternly the doctrine and practice of polygamy, they have nevertheless
been haunted by an uneasy doubt as to whether, after all, there is not some peculiar
virtue in the having half a dozen wives together which endows a man with super-
human gifts as a builder of cities. Otherwise how comes this beautiful and per-
fect city, here on the unfriendly and unsheltering waste ?

Well, I saw no beautiful and wonderful city, although I spent several days in
the Mormon capital, and tramped every one of its streets, and lanes, and roads,
scores of times over. Where others beheld the glorious virgin, Dulcinea del
Toboso, radiant in beauty and bedight with queenly apparel, I saw only the
homely milkmaid, with her red elbows and her russet gown. In plain words,
the Mormon city appeared to me just a commonplace little country town, and no
more. I saw in it no evidences of preternatural energy or skill. It has one de-
cent street, wherein may be found, at most, half a dozen well-built and attractive-
looking shops. It has a good many comfortable residences in the environs. It
has two or three decentish hotels, like the hotels of any other fiftieth-class coun-
try town. It has the huge Tabernacle, a gigantic barn merely, a simple covering
in and over of so much space--- a thing in shape "very like a land turtle," as
President George L. Smith, First Councillor of Brigham Young, observed to me.
Salt Lake City has no lighting and no draining, except such draining as is done
by the little runnels of water to be found in every street, and which remind one
faintly and sadly of dear, quaint old Berne in Switzerland. At night you have
to trudge along in the darkness and the mud, or slush, or dust, and it is a peril-
ous quest the seeking of your way home, for at every crossing you must look or
feel for the plank which bridges over the artificial brooklets already described,

or you plunge helpless and hopeless into the little torrent. Decidedly, a "one-
horse" place, in my estimation; I don't see how men endowed with average
heads and arms could for twenty years have been occupied in the building of a
city, and produced anything less creditable than this. I do not wonder at the
complacency and self-conceit with which all the Mormon residents talk of the
beauty of their city and the wonderful things they have accomplished, when
Gentile travellers of credit and distinction have glorified this shabby, swampy,
ricketty, common-place, vulgar, little hamlet into a town of sweetness and light,
of symmetry and beauty. For my part, and for those who were with me, I can
only say that we spent the first day or so in perpetual wonder as to whether this
really could be the Mormon city of which we had read so many bewildering and
glorious descriptions. And the theatre--- oh, Hepworth Dixon, I like you much,
and I think you are often abused and assailed most unjustly ; but how could you
write so about that theatre ? Or was the beautiful temple of the drama which
you saw here deliberately taken down, and did they raise in its place the big,
gaunt, ugly, dirty, dismal structure which I saw, and in which I and my compan-
ions made part of a dreary dozen or two of audience, and blinked in the dim, de-
pressing light of mediaeval oil-lamps ? I observe that, when driven to bay by
sceptical inquiry, complacent Mormons generally fall back on the abundance of
shade-trees in the streets. Let them have the full credit of this plantation.
They have put trees in the streets, and the trees have grown ; and, when we ob-
serve to a Mormon that we have seen rows of trees similarly growing in even
smaller towns of the benighted European continent, he evidently thinks it is our
monogamic perversity and prejudice which force us to deny the wondrous works
of Mormonism. Making due allowance for every natural difficulty, remember-
ing how nearly every implement, and utensil, and scrap of raw material had to
be brought from across yonder rampart of mountains, and from hundreds of
miles away, I yet fail to see anything very remarkable about this little Mormon
town. Perhaps no other set of people could have made much more of the place ;
I cannot help thinking that no other set of people who were not Digger Indians
could have made much less.

In fact, to retain the proper and picturesque ideas of Salt Lake City, one nev-
er ought to have entered the town at all. We ought to have remained on this
hillside, from which you can look across that most lovely of all valleys on earth,
cinctured as it is by a perfect girdle of mountains, the outlines of which are peer-
less and ineffable in their symmetry and beauty. The air is as clear, the skies
are as blue, the grass as green as the dream of a poet or painter could show him.
There below, fringed and mantled in the clustering green of its trees, you see the
city, with the long, low, rounded dome or back of the Tabernacle rising broad and
conspicuous. Looking down, you may well believe that the city thus exquisitely
placed, thus deliciously shaded and surrounded, is itself a wonder of picturesque-
ness and symmetry. Why go down into the two or three dirty, irregular, shabby
little streets, with their dust or mud for road pavement, their nozzling pigs trot-
ting along the sidewalks, their dung-heaps and masses of decaying vegetable
matter, their utterly commonplace, mean and disheartening aspect everywhere ?
But then we did go down--- and where others had seen a fair and goodly, aye,
and queenly city, we saw a muddy, uninteresting, straggling little village, disfig-
uring the lovely plain on which it stood.

Profound disappointment, then, is my first sensation in Salt Lake City. The
place is so like any other place ! Certainly, one receives a bracing little shock
every now and then, which admonishes him that, despite the small, shabby stores,

98 BRIGHAM YOUNG.

and the pigs, and the dunghills, he is not in the regions of merely commonplace
dirt. For instance, we learn that the proprietor of the hotel where we are stay-
ing has four wives ; and it is something odd to talk with a civil, respectable, bur-
gess-like man, dressed in ordinary coat and pantaloons, and wearing mutton-chop
whiskers--- a sort of man who in England would probably be a church-warden---
and who has more consorts than an average Turk. Then again it is startling to

be asked, "Do you know Mr. ? " and when I say " No, I don't," to be told,

" Oh, you ought to know him. He came from England, and he has lately mar-
ried two such nice English girls ! " One morning, too, we have another kind of
shock. There is a pretty little chambermaid in our hotel, a new-comer apparent-
ly, and she happens to find out that my wife and I had lived for many years in
that part of the North of England from which she comes herself, whereupon she
bursts into a perfect passion and tempest of tears, declares that she would rather
be in her grave than in Salt Lake City, that she was deceived into coming, that
the Mormonism she heard preached by the Mormon propaganda in England was
a quite different thing from the Mormonism practised here, and that her only
longing was to get out of the place, anyhow, forever. The girl seemed to be
perfectly, passionately sincere. What could be done for her ? Apparently
nothing. She had spent all her money in coming out; and she seemed to be
strongly under the conviction that, even if she had money, she could not get
away. An influence was evidently over her which she had not the courage or
strength of mind to attempt to resist, or even to elude. Doubtless, as she was a
very pretty girl, she would be very soon sealed to some ruling elder. She said
her sister had come with her, but the sister was in another part of the city, and
since their arrival--- only a few days, however--- they had not met. My wife en-
deavored to console or encourage her, but the girl could only sob and protest
that she never could learn to endure the place, but that she could not get away,
and that she would rather be in her grave. We spoke of this case to one of the
civil officers of the United States stationed in the city, and he shook his head
and thought nothing could be done. The influence which enslaved this poor
girl was not wholly that of force, but a power which worked upon her senses and
her superstitions. I should think an underground railway would be a valuable
institution to establish in connection with the Mormon city.

I well remember that when I lived in Liverpool, some ten or a dozen years
ago, the Mormon propaganda, very active there, always kept the polygamy insti-
tution modestly in the background. Proselytes were courted and won by de-
scriptions of a new Happy Valley, of a City of the Blest, where eternal summer
shone, where the fruits were always ripe, where the earth smiled with a perpet-
ual harvest, where labor and reward were plenty for all, and where the outworn
toilers of Western Europe could renew their youth like the eagles. I remember,
too, the remarkable case of a Liverpool family having a large business establish-
ment in the most fashionable street of the great town, who were actually beguiled
into selling off all their goods and property and migrating, parents, sons, and
daughters, to the land of promise beyond the American wilderness, and how, be-
fore people had ceased to wonder at their folly, they all came back, humiliated,
disgusted, cured. They had money and something like education, and they
were a whole family, and so they were able, when they found themselves de-
ceived, to effect a rapid retreat at the cost of nothing worse than disappointment
and pecuniary loss. But for the poor, pretty serving-lass from Lancashire I do
not know that there is much hope. Poverty and timidity and superstitious
weakness will help to lock the Mormon chains around her. Perhaps she will

get used to the place in time. Ought one to wish that she may--- or rather to
echo her own prayer, and petition that she may find an early grave ? The grave-
yards are densely planted with tombs here in this sacred city of Mormonism.

The place is unspeakably dreary. Hardly any women are ever seen in the
streets, except on the Sunday, when all the families pour in to service in the
huge Tabernacle. Most of the dwelling houses round the city are pent in behind
walls. Most of the houses, too, have their dismal little sucursales, one or two
or more, built on to the sides--- and in each of these additions or wings to the
original building a different wife and family are caged. There are no flower gar-
dens anywhere. Children are bawling everywhere. Sometimes a wretched,
slatternly, dispirited woman is seen lounging at the door or hanging over the
gate of a house with a baby at her breast. More often, however, the house, or
clump of houses, gives no external sign of life. It stands back gloomy in the
sullen shade of its thick fruit trees, and might seem untenanted if one did not
hear the incessant yelling of the children. We saw the women in hundreds,
probably in thousands, at the Tabernacle on the Sunday--- and what women they
were ! Such faces, so dispirited, depressed, shapeless, hopeless, soulless faces !
No trace of woman's graceful pride and neatness in these slatternly, shabby,
slouching, listless figures ; no purple light of youth over these cheeks ; no sparkle
in these half-extinguished eyes. I protest that only in some of the cretin vil-
lages of the Swiss mountains have I seen creatures in female form so dull, miser-
able, moping, hopeless as the vast majority of these Mormon women. As we
leave the Tabernacle, and walk slowly down the street amid the crowd, we see
two prettily-dressed, lively-looking girls, who laugh with each other and are seem-
ingly happy, and we thank Heaven that there are at least two merry, spirited
girls in Salt Lake City. A few days after we meet our blithesome pair at Min-
tah station ; and they are travelling with their father and mother on to San Fran-
cisco, whither we too are going--- and we learn that they are not Mormons, but
Gentiles--- pleasant lasses from Philadelphia who had come with their parents to
have a passing look at the externals of Mormonism.

My object, however, in writing this paper was to speak of the chief, Brig-
ham Young himself, rather than of his city or his system. We saw Brigham
Young, were admitted to prolonged speech of him, and received his parting ben-
ediction. The interview took place in the now famous house with the white
walls and the gilded beehive on the top. We were received in a kind of office
or parlor, hung round with oil paintings of the kind which in England we regard
as "furniture," and which represented all the great captains and elders of Mor-
monism. Joseph Smith is there, and Brigham Young, and George L. Smith,
now First Councillor ; and various others whom to enumerate would be long, even
if I knew or remembered their names. President Young was engaged just at
the moment when we came, but his Secretary, a Scotchman, I think, and Presi-
dent George L. Smith, are very civil and cordial. George L. Smith is a huge,
burly man, with a Friar Tuck joviality of paunch and visage, and a roll in his
bright eye which, in some odd, undefined sort of way, suggests cakes and ale.
He talks well, in a deep rolling voice, and with a dash of humor in his words and
tone--- he it is who irreverently but accurately likens the Tabernacle to a land-
turtle. He speaks with immense admiration and reverence of Brigham Young,
and specially commends his abstemiousness and hermit-like frugality in the mat-
ter of eating and drinking. Presently a door opens, and the oddest, most whim-
sical figure I have ever seen off the boards of an English country theatre stands
in the room ; and in a moment we are presented formally to Brigham Young.

100 BRIGHAM YOUNG.

There must be something of impressiveness and dignity about the man, for,
odd as is his appearance and make up, one feels no inclination to laugh. But
such a figure ! Brigham Young wears a long-tailed, high-collared coat; the
swallow-tails nearly touch the ground ; the collar is about his ears. In shape the
garment is like the swallow-tail coats which negro-melodists sometimes wear,
or like the dandy English dress coat one can still see in prints in some of the
shops of St. James street, London. But the material of Brigham's coat is some
kind of rough, gray frieze, and the garment is adorned with huge brass buttons.
The vest and trowsers are of the same material. Round the neck of the patri-
arch is some kind of bright crimson shawl, and on the patriarch's feet are natty
little boots of the shiniest polished leather. I must say that the gray frieze coat
of antique and wonderful construction, the gaudy crimson shawl, and the dandy
boots make up an incongruous whole which irresistibly reminds one at first of
the holiday get-up of some African King who adds to a great coat, preserved as
an heirloom since Mungo Park's day, a pair of modern top-boots, and a lady's
bonnet. The whole appearance of the patriarch, when one has got over the Af-
rican monarch impression, is like that of a Suffolk farmer as presented on the
boards of a Surrey theatre. But there is decidedly an amount of composure
and even of dignity about Brigham Young which soon makes one forget the
mere ludicrousness of the patriarch's external appearance. Young is a hand-
some man--- much handsomer than his portrait on the wall would show him.
Close upon seventy years of age, he has as clear an eye and as bright a com-
plexion as if he were a hale English farmer of fifty-five. But there is something
fox-like and cunning lurking under the superficial good-nature and kindliness of
the face. He seems, when he speaks to you most effusively and plausibly, to be
quietly studying your expression to see whether he is really talking you over or
not. The expression of his face, especially of his eyes, strangely and provok-
ingly reminds me of Kossuth. I think I have seen Kossuth thus watch the face
of a listener to see whether or not the listener was conquered by his wonder-
ful power of talk. Kossuth's face, apart from its intellectual qualities, appeared
to me to express a strange blending of vanity, craft, and weakness ; and Brig-
ham Young's countenance now seems to show just such a mixture of qualities.
Great force of character the man must surely have ; great force of character
Kossuth, too, had ; but the face of neither man seemed to declare the possession
of such a quality. Brigham Young decidedly does not impress me as a man of
great ability ; but rather as a man of great plausibility. I can at once under-
stand how such a man, with such an eye and tongue, can easily exert an immense
influence over women. Beyond doubt he is a man of genius ; but his genius
does not reveal itself, to me at least, in his face or his words. He speaks in a
thin, clear, almost shrill tone, and with much apparent bonhomie. After a little
commonplace conversation about the city, its improvements, approaches etc., the
Prophet voluntarily goes on to speak of himself, his system, and his calumnia-
tors. His talk soon flows into a kind of monologue, and is indeed' a curious
rhapsody of religion, sentimentality, shrewdness and egotism. Sometimes sev-
eral sentences succeed each other in which his hearers hardly seem to make out
any meaning whatever, and Brigham Young appears a grotesque kind of Cole-
ridge. Then again in a moment comes up a shrewd meaning very distinctly ex-
pressed, and with a dash of humor and sarcasm gleaming fantastically amid the
scriptural allusions and the rhapsody of unctuous words. The purport of the
whole is that Brigham Young has been misunderstood, misprized, and calumni-
ated, even as Christ was ; that were Christ to come up to-morrow in New York

or London He would be misundertsood, misprized, and caluminated, even as Brig-
ham Young now is ; and that Brigham Young is not to be dismayed though the
stars in their courses should fight against him. He protests with especial emphasis
and at the same time especial meekness, with eyes half closed and delicately-
modulated voice, against the false reports that any manner of force or influence
whatever is, or ever was, exercised to keep men or women in Salt Lake City
against their will. He appeals to the evidence of our own eyes, and asks us
whether we have not seen for ourselves that the city is free to all to come and
go as they will. At this time we had not heard the story told by the poor little
maid at the hotel; but in any case the evidence of our eyes could go no farther
than to prove that travellers like ourselves were free to enter and depart. We
have, however, little occasion to trouble ourselves about answering ; for the
Prophet keeps the talk pretty well all to himself. His manner is certainly not
that of a man of culture, but it has a good deal of the quiet grace and self-pos-
session of what we call a gentleman. There is nothing prononcc or vulgar about
him. Even when he is most rhapsodical his speech never loses its ease and
gentleness of tone. He is bland, benevolent, sometimes quietly pathetic in man-
ner. He poses himself en victime, but with the air of one who does this regret-
fully and only from a disinterested sense of duty. I begin very soon to find that
there is no need of my troubling myself much to keep up the conversation ; that
my business is that of a listener ; that the Prophet conceives himself to be ad-
dressing some portion of the English or American press through my humble
medium. So I listen and my companion listens ; and Brigham Young talks on ;
and I do declare and acknowledge that we are fast drifting into a hazy mental
condition by virtue of which we begin to regard the Mormon President as a vic-
tim of cruel persecution, a suffering martyr and an injured angel!

Time, surely, that the interview should come to a close. We tear ourselves
away, and the Prophet dismisses us with a fervent and effusive blessing.
"Good-bye—do well, mean well, pray always. Christ be with you, God be with
you, God bless you." All this, and a great deal more to the same effect, was
uttered with no vulgar, maw-worm demonstrativeness of tone or gesture, no
nasal twang, no uplifted hands; but quietly, earnestly, as if it came unaffectedly
from the heart of the speaker. We took leave of Brigham Young, and came
away a little puzzled as to whether we had been conversing with an impostor or
a fanatic, a Peter the Hermit or a Tartuffe. One thing, however, is clear to me.
I do not say that Brigham Young is a Tartuffe; but I know now how Tartuffe
ought to be played so as to render the part more effective and more apparently
natural and lifelike than I have ever seen it on French or English stage.

No one can doubt the sincerity of the homage which the Mormons in gener-
al pay to Brigham Young. One man, of the working class, apparently, with
whom I talked at the gate of the Tabernacle, spoke almost with tears in his eyes
of the condescension the Prophet always manifested. My informant told me
that he was at one time disabled by some hurt or ailment; and, the first day that
he was able to come into the street again, President Young happened to be pass-
ing in his carriage, and caught sight of the convalescent. "He stopped his car-
riage, sir, called me over to him, addressed me by my name, shook hands with
me, asked me how I was getting on, and said he was glad to see me out again."
The poor man was as proud of this as a French soldier might have been if the
Little Corporal had recognized him and called him by his name. There is no
flattery which the great can offer to the humble like this way of addressing the
man by his right name, and thus proving that the identity of the small creature

302 BRIGHAM YOUNG.

has lived clearly in the memory of the great being. Many a renowned com-
mander has endeared himself to the soldiers whom he regarded and treated only
as the instruments of his business, by the mere fact that he took care to remem-
ber men's names. They would gladly die for one who could be so nobly gracious,
and could thus prove that they were regarded by him as worthy to occupy each
a distinct place in his busy mind. The niggardliness and selfishness of John,
Duke of Marlborough, the savage recklessness of Claverhouse, were easily for-
gotten by the poor private soldiers whom each commander made it his business,
when occasion required, to address correctly by their appropriate names of Tom,
Dick, or Harry. Lord Palmerston governed the House of Commons and most
of those outside it with whom he usually came into contact, by just such little arts
or courtesies as this. In one of Messrs. Erckmann and Chatrian's novels we
read of a soldier who declares himself ready to go to the death for Marshal Ney
because the Marshal, who originally belonged to the same district as himself,
had just recognized his fellow-countryman and called him by his name. But
the hero of the novel is somewhat grim and sarcastic, and he thinks it was not
so wonderful a condescension that Ney should have recognized an old comrade
and called him by his name. Perhaps the hero of the tale had not himself re-
ceived any such recognition from Ney--- perhaps if it had been vouchsafed to him
he, too, would have been ready to go to the death. Anyhow, this correct calling
of names, and quick recognition has always been a great power in the governing
of men and women. "Deal you in words," is the advice of Mephistophiles to
the student, in Faust, "and you may leave others to do the best they can with
things." I was able to appreciate the governing power of Brigham Young all
the better when I had heard the expression of this poor Mormon's gratitude and
homage to the great President who had shaken hands with him and addressed
him promptly and correctly by his name.

This same Mormon was very communicative. Indeed, as a rule, I found
most of the men in Salt Lake City ready and even eager to discuss their "pecu-
liar institution," and to invite Gentile opinion on it. He showed us his two wives,
and declared that they lived together in perfect harmony and happiness ; never
had a word of quarrel, but were contented and loving as two sisters. He deliv-
ered a panegyric on the moral condition of Salt Lake City, where, he declared,
there was no dishonesty, no drunkenness, and no prostitution. I believe he was
correct in his description of the place. From many quite impartial authorities
I heard the same accounts of the honesty of the Mormons. There certainly is
no drunkenness to be observed anywhere openly, and I believe (although I have
heard others assert the contrary) that Salt Lake City is really and truly free from
this vice ; and I suppose it goes without saying that there is little or no prostitu-
tion in a place where a man is expected to keep as many wives as his means will
allow him. Intelligent Mormons rely immensely on this absence of prostitution
as a justification of their system. They seem to think that when they have said,
"We have no prostitutes," all is said; and that the Gentile, with the shames of
London, Paris and New York burning in his memory and his conscience, must be
left without a word of reply. Brigham Young, in conversation with me, dwelt much
on this absence of prostitution. Orson Pratt preached in the Tabernacle during
our stay a sermon obviously "at" the Gentile visitors, who were just then spe-
cially numerous ; and he drew an emphatic contrast between the hideous profli-
gacy of the Eastern cities and the purity of the Salt Lake community. I must
say, for myself, that I do not think the question can thus be settled ; I do not
think prostitution so great an evil as polygamy. If this blunt declaration should
shock anybody's moral feelings I ana sorry for it; but it is none the less the ex-

pression of my sincere conviction. Pray do not set me down as excusing pros-
titution. I think it the worst of all social evils--- except polygamy. 1 think
polygamy the worse evil, because 1 am convinced that, regarded from a physio-
logical, moral, religious, and even merely poetical and sentimental point of view,
the only true social bond to be sought and maintained and justified is the loving
union of one man with one woman--- at least until death shall part the two. Now,
I regard the existence of prostitution as a proof that some men and women fail to
keep to the right path. I look on polygamy as a proof that a whole community is
going directly the wrong way. No man proposes to himself to lead a life of
profligacy. He falls into it. He would get out of it if he only could--- if the
world and the flesh and the devil were not now and then too strong for him.
But the polygamist deliberately sets up and justifies and glorifies a system which
is as false to physiology as it is to morals. Observe that I do not say the polyg-
amist is necessarily an immoral man. Doubtless he is often--- in Utah I really
believe he is commonly--- a sincere, devoted, mistaken man, who honestly believes
himself to be doing right. But when he attempts to vindicate his system on the
ground that it banishes prostitution, I, for myself, declare that I believe a society
which has to put up with prostitution is in better case and hope than one which
deliberately adopts polygamy. I am emphatic in expressing this opinion because,
as I am opposed to any stronghanded or legal movement whatever to put down
Brigham Young and his system, I desire to have it clearly understood that my
opinions on the subject of polygamy are quite decided, and that no one who has
clamored, or may hereafter clamor, for the uprooting of Mormonism by fire and
sword, can have less sympathy than I have with Mormonism's peculiar institution.
Let me return to Brigham Young. I saw the Prophet but twice--- once in the
street and once in his own house, where the interview took place which I have
described. The day after that on which I last saw him he left Salt Lake City
and went into the country--- some people said to avoid the necessity of meeting
Mr. Colfax, who was just then expected to arrive with his party from the West.
My impressions, therefore, of Brigham Young and his personal character are
necessarily hasty, and probably superficial. I can only say that he did not im-
press me either as a man of great genius, or as a mere charlatan. My impres-
sion is that he is a sincere man--- that is to say, a man who sincerely believes in
himself, accepts his own impulses, prejudices and passions as divine instincts
and intuitions to be the law of life for himself and others, and who, therefore,
has attained that supreme condition of utterly unsparing and pitiless selfishness
when the voice of self is listened to as the voice of God. With such a sincerity
is quite consistent the adoption of every craft and trick in the government of
men and women. Nobody can doubt that Napoleon I. was perfectly sincere as
regards his faith in himself, his destiny, and his duty; and yet there was no trick
of lawyer, or play-actor, or priest, of which he would not condescend to avail
himself if it served his purpose. This is not the sincerity of a Pascal, or a
Garibaldi, or a Garrison ; but it is just as genuine and infinitely more common.
It is the kind of sincerity which we meet every day in ordinary life, when we see
some dogmatic, obstinate father of a family or sense-carrier of a small circle try-
ing to mould every will and conscience and life under his control according to his
own pedantic standard, and firmly confident all the time that his own perverseness
and egotism are a guiding inspiration from heaven. After all, the downright,
conventional stage-hypocrite is the rarest of all beings in real life. I sometimes
doubt whether there ever was in rerum natura any one such creature. I sup-
pose Tartuffe had persuaded himself into self-worship, into the conviction that
everything he said and did must be right. I look upon Brigham Young as a man

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