The International Weekly Miscellany - Volume I, No. 2 | Page 5

before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. He concludes this performance with the following observations, which we believe to be altogether just. Mr. KANE is a man of sagacity and integrity, and his opportunities for the formation of a wise opinion upon this subject were such as very few have possessed:
"I have gone over the work I assigned myself when I accepted your Committee's invitation, as fully as I could do without trespassing too largely upon your courteous patience. But I should do wrong to conclude my lecture without declaring in succinct and definite terms, the opinions I have formed and entertain of the Mormon people. The libels, of which they have been made the subject, make this a simple act of justice. Perhaps, too, my opinion, even with those who know me as you do, will better answer its end following after the narrative I have given.
"I have spoken to you of a people; whose industry had made them rich, and gathered around them all the comforts, and not a few of the luxuries of refined life; expelled by lawless force into the wilderness; seeking an untried home far away from the scenes which their previous life had endeared to them; moving onward, destitute, hunger-sickened, and sinking with disease; bearing along with them their wives and children, the aged, and the poor, and the decrepid; renewing daily on their march, the offices of devotion, the ties of family, and friendship, and charity; sharing necessities, and braving dangers together, cheerful in the midst of want and trial, and persevering until they triumphed. I have told, or tried to tell you, of men, who when menaced by famine, and in the midst of pestilence, with every energy taxed by the urgency of the hour, were building roads and bridges, laying out villages, and planting cornfields, for the stranger who might come after them, their kinsman only by a common humanity, and peradventure a common suffering,--of men, who have renewed their prosperity in the homes they have founded in the desert,--and who, in their new built city, walled round by mountains like a fortress, are extending pious hospitalities to the destitute emigrants from our frontier lines,--of men who, far removed from the restraints of law, obeyed it from choice, or found in the recesses of their religion, something not inconsistent with human laws, but far more controlling; and who are now soliciting from the government of the United States, not indemnity,--for the appeal would be hopeless, and they know it--not protection, for they now have no need of it,--but that identity of political institutions and that community of laws with the rest of us, which was confessedly their birthright when they were driven beyond our borders.
"I said I would give you the opinion I formed of the Mormons: you may deduce it for yourselves from these facts. But I will add that I have not yet heard the single charge against them as a community, against their habitual purity of life, their integrity of dealing, their toleration of religious differences in opinion, their regard for the laws, or their devotion to the constitutional government under which we live, that I do not from my own observation, or the testimony of others, know to be unfounded."
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ORIGINAL POETRY.
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THE BRIDE'S REVERIE.
BY MRS. M.E. HEWITT.
Lonely to-night, oh, loved one! is our dwelling, And lone and wearily hath gone the day; For thou, whose presence like a flood is swelling With joy my life-tide--thou art far away.
And wearily for me will go the morrow, While for thy voice, thy smile, I vainly yearn; Oh, from fond thought some comfort I will borrow, To wile away the hours till thou return!
I will remember that first, sweet revealing Wherewith thy love o'er my tranced being stole; I, like the Pythoness enraptured, feeling The god divine pervading all my soul.
I will remember each fond aspiration In secret milled with thy cherished name, Till from thy lips, in wildering modulation, Those words of ecstasy "I love thee!" came.
And I will think of all our blest communing, And all thy low-breathed words of tenderness; Thy voice to me its melody attuning Till every tone seemed fraught with a caress.
And feel thee near me, while in thought repeating The treasured memories thou alone dost share Hark! with hushed breath and pulses wildly beating I hear thy footstep bounding o'er the stair!
And I no longer to my heart am telling The weary weight of loneliness it bore; For thou, whose love makes heaven within our dwelling, Thou art returned, and all is joy once more.
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TO ----. BY MRS. R.B.K.
Oh how I loved thee! how I blessed the hour, When first thy lips, wak'ning my trusting heart, Like some soft southern gale upon a