There are few sentiments of that great man Benjamin Franklin for which he is more to be revered than for those respecting the burial-place of the departed.197 The grave-yard is, and should ever be deemed, a holy spot; consecrated, not by the cold formalities of unmeaning ceremony, but by the solemn sacredness of the heart. Who that has committed to earth's cold bosom the relics of one dearer, perchance, than existence, can ever after pass the burial-ground with a careless heart. There is nothing which more painfully jars upon my own feelings—if I may except that wanton desecration of God's sanctuary in some sections of our land [74] for a public commitia—than to see the grave-yard slighted and abused. It is like wounding the memory of a buried friend. And yet it is an assertion which cannot be refuted, that, notwithstanding the reverence which, as a people, we have failed not to manifest for the memory of our dead, the same delicate regard and obsequy is not with us observed in the sacred rites as among the inhabitants of the Eastern hemisphere. If, indeed, we may be permitted to gather up an opinion from circumstances of daily notoriety, it would seem that the plat of ground appropriated as a cemetery in many of the villages of our land was devoted to this most holy of purposes solely because useless for every other; as if, after seizing upon every spot for the benefit of the living, this last poor remnant was reluctantly yielded as a resting-place for the departed. And thus has it happened that most of the burial-grounds of our land have either been located in a region so lone and solitary,

or they have been thrust out into the very midst of business, strife, and contention; amid the glare of sunshine, noise, and dust; "the gaudy, babbling, and remorseless day," with hardly a wall of stones to protect them from the inroads of unruly brutes or brutish men. It is as if the rites of sepulture were refused, and the poor boon of a resting-place in the bosom of our common mother denied to her offspring; as if, in our avarice of soul, we grudged even the last narrow house destined for all; and [75] fain would resume the last, the only gift our departed ones may retain. Who would not dread "to die" and have his lifeless clay deposited thus! Who would not, ere the last fleeting particle of existence had "ebbed to its finish," and the feeble breathing had forsaken its tenement for ever, pour forth the anguish of his spirit in the melancholy prayer,

Reverence for the departed is ever a beautiful feature of humanity, and has struck us with admiration for nations of our race who could boast but few redeeming traits beside. It is, moreover, a circumstance not a little remarkable in the history of funeral obsequy, that veneration for the departed has prevailed in a ratio almost inverse to the degree of civilization. Without attempting to account for this circumstance, or to instance the multitude of examples which recur to every mind in its illustration, I would only refer to that deep religion of the soul which Nature has implanted in the heart of her simple child of the Western forests, teaching him to preserve and to honour the bones of his fathers! And those mysterious mausoleums of a former race! do they convey no meaning as they rise in lonely grandeur from our beautiful prairies, and look down upon the noble streams which for ages have dashed their dark floods along their base!

[76] But a few years have passed away since this empire valley of the West was first pressed by the footstep of civilized man; and, if we except those aged sepulchres of the past, the cities of the dead hardly yet range side by side with the cities of the living. But this cannot always be; even in this distant, beautiful land, death must come; and here it doubtless has come, as many an anguished bosom can witness. Is it not, then, meet, while the busy tide of worldly enterprise is rolling heavily forth over this fair land, and the costly structures of art and opulence are rising on every side, as by the enchantment of Arabian fiction—is it not meet that, amid the pauses of excitement, a solitary thought would linger around that spot, which must surely, reader, become the last resting-place of us all!

I have often, in my wanderings through this pleasant land, experienced a thrill of delight which I can hardly describe, to behold, on entering a little Western hamlet, a neat white paling rising up beneath the groves in some green, sequestered spot, whose object none could mistake. Upon some of these, simple as they were, seemed to have been bestowed more than ordinary care; for they betrayed an elaborateness of workmanship and a delicacy of design sought for in vain among the ruder habitations of the living. This is, surely, as it should be; and I pity the man whose feelings cannot appreciate such a touching, beautiful expression of the heart. I have alluded to Franklin, and how pleasant it is to detect the kindly, household emotions of our nature throbbing beneath the [77] starred, dignified breast of philosophy and science. Franklin, the statesman, the sage; he who turned the red lightnings from their wild pathway through the skies, and rocked the iron cradle of the mightiest democracy on the globe! we gaze upon him with awe and astonishment; involuntarily we yield the lofty motto presented by the illustrious Frenchman,198 "Eripuit fulmen coelo, mox sceptra tyrannis." But when we behold that towering intellect descending from its throne, and intermingling its emotions even with those of the lowliest mind, admiration and reverence are lost in love.

The preceding remarks, which have lengthened out themselves far beyond my design, were suggested by the loveliness of the site of the graveyard of the little village of Decatur. I was struck with its beauty on entering the place. It was near sunset; in the distance slept the quiet hamlet; upon my right, beneath the grove, peeped out the white paling through the glossy foliage; and as the broad, deep shadows of summer evening streamed lengthening through the trees wide over the landscape, that little spot seemed to my mind the sweetest one in the scene. And should not the burial-ground be ever thus! for who shall tell the emotions which may swell the bosom of many a dying emigrant who here shall find his long, last rest? In that chill hour, how will the thought of home, kindred, friendships, childhood-scenes, come rushing over the memory! and to lay his bones in the [78] quiet graveyard of his own native village, perchance may draw forth many a sorrowing sigh. But this now may never be; yet it will be consoling to the pilgrim-heart to realize that, though the resurrection morn shall find his relics far from the graves of his fathers, he shall yet sleep the long slumber, and at last come forth with those who were kind and near to him in a stranger-land; who laid away his cold clay in no "Potter's Field," but gathered it to their own household sepulchre. The human mind, whatever its philosophy, can never utterly divest itself of the idea that the spirit retains a consciousness of the lifeless body, sympathizing with its honour or neglect, and affected by all that variety of circumstance which may attend its existence: and who shall say how far this belief—superstition though it be—may smooth or trouble the dying pillow! How soothing, too, the reflection to the sorrow of distant friends, that their departed one peacefully and decently was gathered to his rest; that his dust is sleeping quietly in some sweet, lonely spot beneath the dark groves of the far-land; that his turf is often dewed by the teardrop of sympathy, and around his lowly headstone waves the wild-grass ever green and free! The son, the brother, the loved wanderer from his father's home,

The route leading to Decatur from the west lies chiefly through a broad branch of the "Grand Prairie," an immense plain, sweeping diagonally, with [79] little interruption, through the whole State of Illinois, from the Mississippi to the Wabash. For the first time, in any considerable number, I here met with those singular granite masses, termed familiarly by the settlers "lost rocks"; in geology, boulders. They are usually of a mammillated, globular figure, the surface perfectly smooth, sometimes six hundred tons in weight, and always lying completely isolated, frequently some hundred miles from a quarry. They rest upon the surface or are slightly imbedded in the soil; and, so far as my own observation extends, are of distinct granitic formation, of various density and composition. Several specimens I obtained are as heavy as metal, and doubtless contain iron. Many of them, however, like those round masses dug from the ancient works in Ohio, are pyritous in character. There is a mystery about these "lost rocks" not easily solved, for no granite quarry has ever yet been discovered in Illinois. Their appearance, in the midst of a vast prairie, is dreary and lonely enough.

The site of the town of Decatur is somewhat depressed, and in the heart of a grove of noble oaks.199 Long before the traveller reaches it, the whole village is placed before his eye from the rounded summit of the hill, over which winds the road. The neighbouring region is well settled; the prairie high and rolling, and timber abundant. It is not a large place, however; and perhaps there are few circumstances which will render it otherwise for some years. It contains, nevertheless, a few handsome buildings; several trading establishments; a good tavern; is said to be healthy; and, upon the whole, is a far [80] prettier, neater little village than many others of loftier pretensions through which I have passed in Illinois. The village will be intersected by two of the principal railroads of the state, now projected, which circumstance cannot fail to place it in the first rank as an inland trading town.

My visit at Decatur was a short one; and, after tea, just as the moon was beginning to silver the tops of the eastern oaks, I left the village and rode leisurely through the forest, in order to enter upon the prairie at dawn the following day. A short distance from Decatur I again forded the Sangamon; the same insignificant stream as ever; and, by dint of scrambling, succeeded in attaining the lofty summit of its opposite bank, from which the surrounding scenery of rolling forest-tops was magnificent and sublime. From this elevation the pathway plunged into a thick grove, dark as Erebus, save where lighted up by a few pale moonbeams struggling through a break in the tree-tops, or the deep-red gleamings of the evening sky streaming at intervals along the undergrowth. The hour was a calm and impressive one: its very loneliness made it sweeter; and that beautiful hymn of the Tyrolean peasantry at sunset, as versified by Mrs. Hemans, was forcibly recalled by the scene:

[81] After a ride of a few miles my path suddenly emerged from the forest upon the edge of a boundless prairie, from whose dark-rolling herbage, here and there along the distant swells, was thrown back the glorious moonlight, as if from the restless, heaving bosom of the deep. An extensive prairie, beneath a full burst of summer moonlight, is, indeed, a magnificent spectacle. One can hardly persuade himself that he is not upon the ocean-shore. And now a wild, fresh breeze, which all the day had been out playing among the perfumed flowers and riding the green-crested waves, came rolling in from the prairie, producing an undulation of its surface and a murmuring in the heavy forest-boughs perfect in the illusion. All along the low, distant horizon hung a thin mist of silvery gauze, which, as it rose and fell upon the dark herbage, gave an idea of mysterious boundlessness to the scene. Here and there stood out a lonely, weather-beaten tree upon the plain, its trunk shrouded in obscurity, but its leafy top sighing in the night-breeze, and gleaming like a beacon-light in the beams of the cloudless moon. There was a dash of fascinating romance about the scene, which held me involuntarily upon the spot until reminded by the chill dews of night that I had, as yet, no shelter. On casting around my eye, I perceived a low log cabin, half buried in vegetation, standing alone in the skirt of the wood. Although a miserable tenement, necessity compelled me to accept its hospitality, and I entered. It consisted of a single apartment, in which two beds, two stools, a cross-legged deal table, [82] and a rough clothes-press, were the only household furniture. A few indispensable iron utensils sat near the fire; the water-pail and gourd stood upon the shelf, and a half-consumed flitch of bacon hung suspended in the chimney; but the superlatives of andirons, shovel and tongs, etc., etc., were all unknown in this primitive abode. A pair of "lost rocks"—lost, indeed—supplied the first, and the gnarled branch of an oak was substituted for the latter. The huge old chimney and fireplace were, as usual, fashioned of sticks and bedaubed with clay; yet everything looked neat, yea, comfortable, in very despite of poverty itself. A young female with her child, an infant boy, in her arms, was superintending the preparation of the evening meal. Her language and demeanour were superior to the miserable circumstances by which she was surrounded; and though she moved about her narrow demesne with a quiet, satisfied air, I was not long in learning that affection alone had transplanted this exotic of the prairie from a more congenial soil. What woman does not love to tell over those passages of her history in which the heart has ruled lord of the ascendant? and how very different in this respect is our sex from hers! Man, proud man, "the creature of interest and ambition," often blushes to be reminded that he has a heart, while woman's cheek mantles with the very intensity of its pulsation! The husband in a few minutes came in from attending to my horse; the rough table was spread; a humble fare was produced; all were seated; and then, beneath that miserable roof, [83] around that meager board, before a morsel of the food, poor as it was, passed the lip of an individual, the iron hand of toil was reverently raised, and a grateful heart called down a blessing from the Mightiest! Ah! thought I, as I beheld the peaceful, satisfied air of that poor man, as he partook of his humble evening meal with gratefulness, little does the son of luxury know the calm contentment which fills his breast! And the great God, as he looks down upon his children and reads their hearts, does he not listen to many a warmer, purer thank-offering from beneath the lowly roof-tree of the wilderness, than from all the palaces of opulence and pride? So it has ever been—so it has ever been—and so can it never cease to be while the heart of man remains attempered as it is.

The humble repast was soon over; and, without difficulty, I entered into conversation with the father of the family. He informed me that he had been but a few years a resident of Illinois; that he had been unfortunate; and that, recently, his circumstances had become more than usually circumscribed, from his endeavours to save from speculators a pre-emption right of the small farm he was cultivating. This farm was his all; and, in his solicitude to retain its possession, he had disposed of every article of the household which would in any way produce money, even of a part of his own and his wife's wardrobe. I found him a man of considerable intelligence, and he imparted to me some facts respecting that singular sect styling themselves Mormonites of which I was previously hardly aware. Immense [84] crowds of these people had passed his door on the great road from Terre Haute, all with families and household effects stowed away in little one-horse wagons of peculiar construction, and on their journey to Mount Zion, the New Jerusalem, situated near Independence, Jackson county, Missouri! Their observance of the Sabbath was almost pharisaically severe, never permitting themselves to travel upon that day; the men devoting it to hunting, and the females to washing clothes, and other operations of the camp! It was their custom, likewise, to hold a preachment in every village or settlement, whether men would hear or forbear: the latter must have been the case with something of a majority, I think, since no one with whom I have ever met could, for the life of him, give a subsequent expose of Mormonism, "though often requested."

They assert that an angelic messenger has appeared to Joe Smith, announcing the millennial dawn at hand; that a glorious city of the faithful—the New Jerusalem, with streets of gold and gates of pearl—is about to be reared upon Mount Zion, Mo., where the Saviour will descend and establish a kingdom to which there shall be no end; ergo, argue these everlasting livers, it befits all good citizens to get to Independence, Jackson county, aforesaid, as fast as one-horse wagons will convey them!200 Large quantities of arms and ammunition have, moreover, been [85] forwarded, so that the item of "the sword being beaten into a ploughshare, and spear into pruning-hook," seems not of probable fulfilment according to these worthies. The truth of the case is, they anticipated a brush with the long-haired "pukes"201 before securing a "demise, release, and for ever quitclaim" to Zion Hill, said pukes having already at sundry times manifested a refractory spirit, and, from the following anecdote of my good man of the hut, in "rather a ridic'lous manner." I am no voucher for the story: I give it as related; "and," as Ben Jonson says, "what he has possessed me withal, I'll discharge it amply."

"One Sabbath evening, when the services of the congregation of the Mormonites were over, the Rev. Joe Smith, priest and prophet, announced to his expectant tribe that, on the succeeding Sabbath, the baptismal sacrament would take place, when an angel would appear on the opposite bank of the stream. Next Sabbath came, and 'great was the company of the people' to witness the miraculous visitation. The baptism commenced, and was now wellnigh concluded: 'Do our eyes deceive us! can such things be! The prophecy! the angel!' were exclamations which ran through the multitude, as a fair form, veiled in a loose white garment, with flowing locks and long bright pinions, stood suddenly before the assembled multitude upon the opposite shore, and then disappeared! All was amazement, consternation, awe! But where is Joe Smith? In a few moments Joe Smith was with them, and their faith was confirmed.

[86] "Again was a baptism appointed—again was the angel announced—a larger congregation assembled—and yet again did the angel appear. At that moment two powerful men sprang from a thicket, rushed upon the angelic visitant, and, amid mingling exclamations of horror and execrations of piety from the spectators, tore away his long white wings, his hair and robe, and plunged him into the stream! By some unaccountable metamorphosis, the angel emerged from the river honest Joe Smith, priest of Mormon, finder of the golden plates, etc., etc., and the magi of the enchantment were revealed in the persons of two brawny pukes." Since then, the story concludes, not an angel has been seen all about Mount Zion! The miracle of walking upon water was afterward essayed, but failed by the removal, by some impious wags, of the benches prepared for the occasion. It is truly astonishing to what lengths superstition has run in some sections of this same Illinois. Not long since, a knowing farmer in the county of Macon conceived himself ordained of heaven a promulgator to the world of a system of "New Light," so styled, upon "a plan entirely new." No sooner did the idea strike his fancy, than, leaving the plough in the middle of the furrow, away sallies he to the nearest village, and admonishes every one, everywhere, forthwith to be baptized by his heaven-appointed hands, and become a regenerate man on the spot. Many believed—was there ever faith too preposterous to obtain proselytes? the doctrine, in popular phrase, "took mightily;" and, it must be confessed, the whole world, men, women, and children, were [87] in a fair way for regeneration. Unfortunately for that desirable consummation, at this crisis certain simple-hearted people thereabouts, by some freak of fancy or other, took it into their heads that the priest himself manifested hardly that quantum of the regenerated spirit that beseemed so considerable a functionary. Among other peccadilloes, he had unhappily fallen into a habit every Sabbath morning, when he rode in from his farmhouse—a neat little edifice which the good people had erected for his benefit in the outskirts of the village—of trotting solemnly up before the grocery-door upon his horse, receiving a glass of some dark-coloured liquid, character unknown, drinking it off with considerable gusto, dropping a picayune into the tumbler, then proceeding to the pulpit, and, on the inspiration of the mysterious potation, holding vehemently forth. Sundry other misdeeds of the reverend man near about the same time came to light, so that at length the old women pronounced that terrible fiat, "the preacher was no better than he should be;" which means, as everybody knows, that he was a good deal worse. And so the men, old and young, chimed in, and the priest was politely advised to decamp before the doctrine should get unsavoury. Thus ended the glorious discovery of New-lightism!

It is a humiliating thing to review the aberrations of the human mind: and, believe me, reader, my intention in reviewing these instances of religious fanaticism has been not to excite a smile of transient merriment, nor for a moment to call in question the [88] reality of true devotion. My intention has been to show to what extremes of preposterous folly man may be hurried when he once resigns himself to the vagaries of fancy upon a subject which demands the severest deductions of reason. It is, indeed, a melancholy consideration, that, in a country like our own, which we fondly look upon as the hope of the world, and amid the full-orbed effulgence of the nineteenth century, there should exist a body of men, more than twelve thousand in number, as is estimated, professing belief in a faith so unutterably absurd as that styled Mormonism; a faith which would have disgraced the darkest hour of the darkest era of our race.202 But it is not for me to read the human heart.

Shelbyville, Ill.

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