walls had been redecorated, and then nobody
was extravagant or curious enough to care
about defacing them to recover it, until our
boys took the work in hand. Who boarded up
the closet is not known, but there can be no
doubt that it kept the secret of murder, and
that the skeleton we found was that of Mam'selle
Elise. Bridget Johnes recognised the
betrothal-ring on her hand.

                    NEW AMERICA.

IT would be difficult to find a stronger illustration
of the rapid pace at which life may now speed,
than a couple of goodly volumes that have
adorned our library table for more than a month.
Their author, not earlier in the holiday-time of
last year than August, scorning such designs
for recreation as would have satisfied him no
very long time ago by a trip to Brighton, or
Bath, or Scarborough, or, by a great effort, to
Paris, starts for the furthest reachable corner of
America, returns, and before the end of January
— in five months— presents us with a handsome
book of travels: not confused quires of imperfect
observations " dashed off" against time in
express trains, but a careful, wise, and graphic
picture of the most prominent social phenomena
which the newest phases of the New World
present. The book is called NEW AMERICA; its
author, whose holiday work it is, being the
well-known and busy journalist, Mr. Hepworth Dixon.
The accident of travel has inflicted on literature
many incompetent authors; but here, a practised
writer— with a distinct purpose set in his
mind, gifted with knowledge of what is already
to be learnt and keen perception of whatever is
new to be met with in his travels, an accomplished
literary artist— expresses himself clearly
and vividly, interesting his reader not less by
his manner than in his matter.

Some of his matter is extremely curious. In
America, the land unencumbered by traditions
or experiences of the past, the wildest dreams of
social organisation get quickly translated into
realities, and desires and discontents find free
expression. Experiments in social polity are being
worked out there, from polygamous Mormonism
to marriage-hating Shakerism, which it requires
a writer of Mr. Dixon's acuteness, temperance of
statement, and freedom from partisanship, to
present to the European reader without making
him stand aghast.

After a weary and perilous journey across
the desert that lies between the Mississippi river
and the Rocky Mountains, Mr. Dixon and his
companion arrived at Utah, the Mormon city.
He describes a square block, ten acres in
extent, as the heart of the city— the Mormon
holy place, the harem of the young Jerusalem of
the West. This centre gives a pattern of form
and measurement to the whole city. As yet
only the foundations, of massive granite, are
laid; Brigham Young attending to the social and
physical requirements of his people as matters
of earliest importance, while leaving the perfecting
of the temple to a later and riper time. The
city, which covers three thousand acres of
ground, is laid out in blocks of ten acres each,
each block divided into lots of one acre and a
quarter, as the regulation amount of land for a
cottage and a garden. From each side of the
temple starts a street, a hundred feet wide,
going out into the level plain, and in straight
lines into space. Streets of the same width,
and parallel to these, run north and south, east
and west, each planted with locust and ailanthus-trees,
and cooled by running streams. But in
Main-street, the chief thoroughfare for hotels
and shops, the gardens have been cut down for
the exigencies of trade, and some of the larger
stores are built now of red stone, standing side
by side with wooden shanties and adobe cots.
In each apportioned lot stands a cottage in the
midst of fruit-trees; sometimes there are two
or three cottages in the orchard, wherein dwell
the various wives of the polygamous saint.
Elder Hiram Clawson's house is in a lovely
garden, red with delicious peaches, plums, and
apples, where live his first and second wives
with their nurseries of twenty children; but
there is a dainty white bower in the corner,
smothered in roses and creepers, and here, with
her four boys, lives the youngest wife, Alice, a
daughter of Brigham Young, and popularly
supposed to be the supreme favourite. They
say that Elder Hiram Clawson is courting
Emily, the sister of Alice— that he will be soon
married to her also; yet "the perils of a double
alliance with the Mormon pope are said to be
great. Envy among the elders, collision with
the Gentiles, jealousy at Camp Douglas, hostility
at Washington; but Elder Clawson is said
to be ready to take his chance with Sister
Emily, as he had done with Alice, answering, as
the Mormons put it, Washington theories, by
Descret facts."

No beggars are seen in these long straight
dusty green-lined streets— scarcely even a tipsy
man; and if you see one, he is a Gentile. The
people are quiet and civil. The streets are
pastoral and picturesque, as are no other
streets in the world. Standing under the
locust-trees is an ox come home for the night;
a cow at a gate is being milked by a
child; Snake Indians, with their long hair,
their scant drapery, their proud reserve,
are cheapening the dirtiest and cheapest lots;
a New Mexican in his broad sombrero is
dashing up the dust on his wiry little horse;
miners in huge boots and belts are loafing
about; officers from the camp, in their
dark-blue uniforms, keep a sharp look-out on Mormon
ways: and those wild unearthly folk, eager,
excited, fatigued, but full of hope and happiness-
those sunburnt emigrants just come in
from the prairies, sitting under the acacias and
dabbling their feet in the running creek, are
Woolwich artisans, sober Monmouth farmers,
and smart London tradesmen, who have
conquered the perils of the journey, and are now
admitted as brethren to their Mormon home.
One of the most curiously instructive things