States. Their church is based on these ideas:
the kingdom of God has come; Christ has
actually appeared on earth; the personal rule
of God has been restored. The old law is
abolished; the command to multiply has ceased;
Adam's sin has been atoned; the intercourse
between heaven and earth has been restored;
the curse is taken away from labour; the earth
and all that is on it will be redeemed; angels
and spirits have become, as of old, the familiars
and ministers of men. No Shaker marries, and
no Shaker dies. The soul simply withdraws and
leaves the body, which is now as a worn-out
garment; but the spirit is as living and present
to seeresses like Sister Antoinette as when it
animated its earthly tabernacle. Antoinette and
those like to her are never alone. Shut up in
the visible solitudes of their own chambers, they
hear, see, and converse with their departed
friends as distinctly as if all were still in the
body. So indeed do other denominations,
springing out of diseased imagination, with
more show of truth and earnestness than ever
belonged to the impostures of Home, the
Davenports, and their congeners.

Amongst the spiritualists of a doubtful
sort are the Dentonists, as they may be
called— the order of Female Seers, who, by
pressing a stone, a shell, a weed to their
foreheads, pretend to read off, as from an open
book, all the natural history connected therewith.
They call this gift psychometry. They,
or rather their offspring, the followers of Eliza
Farnham, are the great champions of woman's
superiority over the baser male sex; which is a
step in advance of woman's rights. There was
a time, they say, when men were like hairy
monkeys; but even then the women were
superior, in that they were less hairy and
more erect. One of the apostles of the sect,
Helene Marie Weber, is a practical farmer, and
takes her produce to market dressed like a man,
in boots, " pants," and buttons. Her every-day
garb is a coat and trousers of black cloth; her
evening dress is a dark blue coat with gilt
buttons, buff cashmere vest richly trimmed with
gilt buttons, and drab trousers.

Then there are the Tunkers, or Harmless
People, whose chief principle is that of fraternal
love, and who marry among themselves under a
kind of protest, and with the feeling that celibacy
is holiness, and marriage, if not a crime,
yet is akin to it. There are also the Bible
Communists or Perfectionists at Oneida Creek,
the rule of whose life is pantogamy, about
which not much need be said, save that they
have established their community on religious
principles, which are briefly these:
(1.) reconciliation with God; (2) salvation from
sin; (3) brotherhood of man and woman;
(4) community of labour and its fruits. John
Humphrey Noyes, the founder of the sect, a tall
pale man, with sandy hair and beard, grey
dreamy eyes, good mouth, white temple, and
a noble forehead, says that all other communistic
institutions have failed, because they were not
founded on Bible truth; they began at the
third and fourth stages; they left God out of
their tale, and they came to nothing. The
Perfectionists live on the principle of holiness,
each brother and sister doing as he likes; but
there is a counter-check to this in the principle
of Sympathy, akin to that which public opinion
holds with us. Thus, a brother may do as he
likes, but he is trained to do everything in
sympathy with the general wish. If the public
judgment is against him, he is wrong, the family
being supposed to be always wiser than the
unit. If he wants anything for himself— a new
hat, a holiday, a damsel's smiles— he must
consult with one of the elders and see how the
brotherhood feels on the subject of his wish.
If against him, he must retire. Until this doctrine
of sympathy was introduced, the community
of Perfect Saints had little of what the world
would call success.

The great trade at Oneida Creek is in
traps. Brother Newhouse, an old trapper
who settled down to machine work at Oneida
Creek, took the matter in hand, and made
a trap which made the family. In a single
year they cleared eighty thousand dollars
of profit by these traps, and even now their
yearly revenue is about three thousand pounds,
English money. The advanced saints are
vegetarians, the weaker still indulge in flesh; they
drink no wine, nor beer, unless it be a dose of
either cherry wine or gooseberry wine taken as
a cordial. "I tasted three or four kinds of
this home-made wine," says Mr. Dixon, " and
agree with Brother Noyes that his people will
be better without such drinks."

These are the more salient points of Mr.
Dixon's book, but by no means the only passages
of mark. On the contrary, the whole narrative
is full of interest from end to end, as well as
of most important subjects for consideration.
No student of society, no historian of humanity,
should be without it, as a reliableand valuable
text-book on New America.

            MUSIC ABOUT MUSIC.

    IN TWO CHAPTERS. CHAPTER I.

ART, as a theme for works of art, is not the
easiest possible subject to handle. Novels, in
which poets and novelists figure too prominently,
are apt to be sickly and uninteresting. Alfred
de Vigny's " Chatterton," though supported
by the passionate acting of Madame
Dorval, was more painful than popular as a
drama. The rule, with some small exceptions,
may be applied to plays about actors— not
forgetting " Tiridate," " Sullivan," and even
"Adrienne Lecouvreur," written to exhibit Rachel's
wondrous dramatic power in a new phase.

Then, as to pictures, who could name one,
in which a painter is the hero, that bears a
universal, incontestable reputation as a
first-class work of art? Raphael and the Fornarina
— the Monarch picking up the Artist's pencil
(to name but two subjects)— how often and
again have these and other well-worn persons