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

KANE, of Philadelphia, distinguished himself very
honorably a year or two ago by the vindication of the Mormons against
calumnies to which they had been subjected in the Western States, and
by appeals for their relief from the sufferings induced by unlooked-for
exposure in their exodus to California. We are indebted to him for an
interesting discourse upon the subject, delivered 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."
* * * * *
ORIGINAL POETRY.
* * * * *
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