the wide Atlantic, highly extolling the behaviour
of these Emigrants, and the perfect order and
propriety of all their social arrangements. What
is in store for the poor people on the shores of
the Great Salt Lake, what happy delusions they
are labouring under now, on what miserable blindness
their eyes may be opened then, I do not
pretend to say. But I went on board their ship
to bear testimony against them if they deserved
it, as I fully believed they would; to my great
astonishment they did not deserve it; and my
predispositions and tendencies must not affect
me as an honest witness. I went over the
Amazon's side, feeling it impossible to deny that,
so far, some remarkable influence had produced
a remarkable result, which better known influences
have often missed.*

* After this Uncommercial Journey was printed,
I happened to mention the experience it describes
to Mr. MONCKTON MILNES, M.P. That gentleman
then showed me an article of his writing, in The
Edinburgh Review for January, 1862, which is
highly remarkable for its philosophical and literary
research concerning these Latter-Day Saints. I
find in it the following sentences: "The Select
Committee of the House of Commons on emigrant ships
for 1854 summoned the Mormon agent and
passenger-broker before it, and came to the conclusion
that no ships under the provisions of the
'Passengers Act' could be depended upon for comfort
and security in the same degree as those under his
administration. The Mormon ship is a Family
under strong and accepted discipline, with every
provision for comfort, decorum, and internal peace."

THE JUDGE AND THE BISHOP.
AN AUTHENTIC ROMAGNOLE CHRONICLE.

                         I

  IMOLA city is old and staid;
  Long of pedigree, light of purse;
  Wedded to dulness for better for worse,
     And far too genteel for trade!
  Imola lies at the Apennine's foot,
  Where the broad rich plain sweeps out to the sea,
  Midway along the leg-seam of "the Boot."
     A limb wrenched free
     From the great Roman tree;
  Snatched and tugged for; battered and bought;
  Leaguered and plundered; bandied and caught;
Till Julius the fierce, of the triple crown,
Clawed at it, gripped it, and crunched it down.
       As a lawyer gobbles a fee.
  Since then lives Imola, dozily ever,
  With a very grand bridge o'er a very small river:
  Owning no lions, solemn or gay
  Save its site on the long Flaminian Way;
Some heavy stone shields over cavernous porches
With twisticumtwirlies of iron, for torches;
The Via Flaminia, which nobody traces;
Two glorified saints in two plate-glass cases;
Some grim old palaces, stern and stark
In grim old thoroughfares, narrow and dark;
One Arabic Codex, which nobody reads;
And sundry old coaches (the Bishop's is one),
Which trundle on holidays forth in the sun,
And look as if vehicles, masters and steeds
     Had just toddled out of the Ark.
  Stay! I'd forgotten her modern claim
  To worthy note on the rolls of fame.
  Imola has had two sons of name;
  (Stepsons, that is,) in her reverend lap
  Dandled, and fed on episcopal pap
  Till ruddy and ripe for the papal throne.
  Pius the seventh P. M. was one.
(Of course I don't mean by those letters to tax him as
Anything meaner than, Pontifex Maximus.)
  And John Mastai, his present Beatitude,
  Her other hope (a most promising child,
But a trifle, folks tell us, too simple and mild),
  Was Bishop there twenty winters syne,
  Just then returned from a Southern latitude;
  An easy, cozy, smiling divine,
  Who played his billiards, and sipped his wine,
  Quavered his mass without fear or reproach,
  Gave his blessing, and rode in his coach.
     Whenever the day was fine.
  He is the hero of our story,
  Though he'd not yet come to popedom's glory.

                              II

At Imola also lived Bernard Montani,
     Ex-Gonfalonièr
     (As who should say, mayor).
  A good plain fellow, with grizzled hair,
  A clear grey eye, a bold bluff nose,
And a beard that was bushy and grew as it chose.
  A cheerful soul as you'd wish to meet;
  Mild as the Bishop, but not so sweet,
  With twice the brains, and none of the blarney.
     Yet he had his share
     Of coil and care,
Had Bernard Montani, Ex-Gonfalonièr;
  For he was ex-judge of the census too
  (Whatever such judges may have to do),
  And the second ex with which he was cursed,
     In right Roman fashion
     Of numeration,
  Gave twofold value and weight to the first,
  And touched his heart in the tenderest spot,
For the judgeship brought cash, though the mayorship did not.
  And the young Montanis multiplied quick;
  Their butter grew thin, though their bread was thick;
  And the Roman Curia, cruel and sly,
  Which owed him a grudge, it best knew why.
  Watching its time with a greedy eye,
  And marking the need, cut off the supply
     From the man it hated and feared.
For, to tell the cause of the sudden prostration
From honour and ease, into quasi starvation,
     Which lay at the root,
     Beyond all dispute,
Of Montani's . . . we'll call it condign visitation;
  'Twas . . . that truculent bushy beard!

                              III

  For those were the days when Italian jaws
  Were mown with a scythe of Draconian laws,
  Which branded the hair on men's lips and chins
  As the outcrop of each of the deadly sins.
  Beards of all hues, and beards of all patterns,
  From sainted Loyòla's to Solon's or Saturn's,
  Beards of all grades, down to tuft and imperial,
  As contraband samples of peccant material,
  Were scored on the ledgers of gendarme and priest,
  In capital letters; THE MARK OF THE BEAST!
And deemed an appendage as foul and outrageous
As Medusa's snake head-dress, and much more contagious.