The life of Jonathan Sharp contains also facts new to Europe. It is the history of a convert to the dogmata of the singular sect founded by Joseph Smith, a sect whose outward practices are strangely bizarre, and conceal, says the writer, very important ulterior designs. "I was dreaming in my shop," he says, "on the point of bankruptcy, a very common and natural event in our country, when I saw coming in a large muscular man, who took his hat off with politeness and sate down; I had never seen him before. It was Smith. From what I had heard of him, I regarded him as one of those numerous American speculators, people who mingle pious fraud with vulgar trickery, and so cheat humanity in two ways. "I am Joseph Smith,' he said, 'I will not employ any oratorical precautions with you; I know that you have imagination, intelligence, resources, and also that you are on the brink of ruin. I offer you a support; profit by it. The ignorant detest me, the foolish fear me. The mass never sees anything but the exterior, which makes it stupid; it neither looks for the causes, nor examines into their consequences. What is now certain is that I am now master of twenty-five hundred men, whom I have taught, who believe in me; for whom my word is law, whose customs seem singular and who therefore are more attached to these customs. Can any one reproach me with having employed mysticism, fanaticism, incantations, hallucinations or magnetism, to attain my object. Will you, like an idiot, laugh at my dances in church, my religious waltzes? The Dervises do the same. I have mastered minds, and conquered souls by these means. Without my inflexible energy, I could not have bound, in the same chain, all these men, some wild and uncultivated, other civilized and perfidious. I come to you because I know that you can understand me; because in your present situation you can do nothing better than come with me. My dogmata are for the vulgar crowd; it is amused by my rites, and my grotesque ceremonies help to pass the time. To superior intellects, and to men of a certain order I have to offer a more precise and elevated object.' "I looked at him attentively, while his small, deep-set, black eye, penetrated me, and seemed to look into my very soul. Flattery, stratagem, resolution, suppleness and ferocity were the unmistakable characteristics of that Jewish face, with its nose crooked like the beak of a bird of prey, its forehead high as a wall. He seemed to be studying the effect which he had produced on me. His brows were raised, and the quick gleam of his fiery eye betrayed the secret fire of withheld thought. We kept silence for a while. "Life is a struggle," said he. "The strongest will win. Till now I have been the strongest. If you do not know my history I will tell it you. Nurtured on alms, born in a street of New-Orleans, apprentice, hawker, small tradesman, I was thrown among the masses, and lived and suffered like them. The first fact which I recognized was the folly with which the so-called free men of our American Republics, so proud of their institutions, strive to destroy each other, and consider each other as devouring, or to be devoured. From these inimical atoms, these individual egotisms, these quarreling appetites, there was nothing to hope for but perpetual war and destruction without end. These men have not even the instincts of self-preservation, by which the animals unite to defend themselves against a common enemy. "This I understood, and an idea struck me, to unite these wills by the force of a superior will. The folly of the opinions, or of the ideas by which men are united under the same standard, are of little importance, provided that the battalion be formed. I set myself to work, therefore, and I succeeded. My first efforts were limited to a small district in Pennsylvania. Soon, nearly all Ohio was mine. I realized anew the miracles of the first Christian monasteries. Among my many adepts, some brought me fortune, others credit, and all power. Our force was in union, and every day, our group, grown more compact, contrasted more with the feebleness and enervation which surrounded us. Now, I am master of nearly all Missouri, and I form vast plans. On the very edge of the wilderness there are Mormons, men whose hearts beat in union with mine. I have given them unity, discipline, zeal, habits of order; now, all that we want to be strong is persecution-one single persecution, and the number of my followers will be centupled. You do not know how much liberty of action weighs upon the majority of men; how necessary despotism is to them. It is one of the great causes of my success. Few have the courage to begin; few know how to use their independence. I am a despot, and all obey me. The territory which separates us from Mexico is filled with savage tribes, which only want to be rallied. The Irish laborers, who suffer and die of hunger; the European exiles, of whom there are more every year, will come to me; the Comanches, the Patagonians, the mingled races which live on the borders of civilization, will one day be mine. I have harmony and order for me. I unite the divided elements; the future must be mine. While democracy isolates individuals, I group them; and sooner or later you will see me raising the cupolas and domes of my capital city above the forests which surround us. "There is a future empire in the still little civilized provinces of Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and Indiana. Would you know why I address myself to you? Your uncle commands the miners of this district, is the principal magistrate, and one of the richest proprietors. Do you and he come with us, and our power is assured. northern lakes, and go even to the Pacific. We will pass the You see that the men are equal; words liberty and equality are but words; no the rest is political fraud. I will not treat you as I do my vulgar subjects. I tell you the truth; I do not hide my ambition. Come then with me.” If the popular books published by certain Americans are badly written; if the form be imperfect and the diction careless or insufficient; at least they interest by the facts which they give and the experience which they teach. CHAPTER III. SECTION I. HERMAN MELVILLE AND HIS REAL VOYAGES. MR. MELVILLE lived for four months, absolutely like a primitive man, in Noukahiva, a Polynesian island, and it is his adventures while there that form the subject of his first books, the narratives of his actual voyages. He lived in an unknown valley in one of the Marquesas Isles, in the midst of an inland tribe, scarcely visited by the missionary, and which has not yet undergone that half-civilization which is imposed upon the savages of the coast by their contact with Europeans. These latter have, as we know, become strange samples of pretentious barbarism, and coquettish ignorance. Mr. Melville, who lived very little among the half-civilized, knew well the savages who ate up his comrade, and intended to eat him. Unfortunately, Mr. Melville's style is so ornate, his Rubens-like tints are so vivid and warm, and he has so strong a predilection for dramatic effects, that one does not know exactly how much confidence to repose in his narrative. We do not take except cum grano salis, his florid descriptions. |