schemes. He waited the proper time and
opportunity for these, and knew how to
preserve a discreet silence when he perceived
that the faith of his hearers was weak.

In 1765 he appeared in the country of
Prenzlow, in the undisguised fervour of
fanaticism.  His appearance was still more
wretched than before;  his eye more wild.
He was now the prophet, who, through long
meditation, had arrived at the gift for which
his soul thirsted.  He entered the cottage of
a shepherd in Dedelow, asked for a draught
of water; and, holding aloft the cup, exclaimed
to the man and his wife in an impressive tone,
"Children! if you only knew who I am!"
When they asked who he might be, he
replied, "I am the messenger of God, sent
forth to seek his sheep, and gather them into
the fold. The prophet, Micah, iv. 8, has duly
announced me:—' O, Tower of Eder! thou
stronghold of the daughter of Zion, unto thee
the Golden Rose shall come, even the former
dominion, the kingdom of the daughter of
Jerusalem.'" The simple creatures believed
him; they became his firm disciples, and
continued unshaken in their faith, even after
his bold prophecy of wonders to come in the
year 1770 had totally failed.

Rosenfeld was no longer the wandering
vagabond whom some ridiculed, and whom
others received and assisted out of compassion.
His name flew far and wide over the
Prussian plains ; he had very soon a large
community of believers, who took care that
he needed for nothing. He denounced the
wickedness of the world—a safe and perpetual
theme. He proceeded then to anathematise
Frederick the Great, as the Great Dragon of
the Apocalypse, and the clergy as impostors,
because they preached death, which he denied
to exist for the faithful. He promised his
believers immortality, and they believed him,
although they saw his disciples dying every
day. At last he proclaimed himself to be the
true Messiah, and blasphemously asserted
that Our Saviour was only an impostor. His
followers believed everything. In Berlin
there were numbers of these ; but the chief
scene of his success was at Biesenthal, about
eighteen miles from Berlin, a place at that
time as completely removed from the notice of
the capital as if it had been distant a hundred
leagues. Here he acted the part of a German
Mahomet. He kept up a determined warfare
with the clergy ; ruled his flock of shepherds,
shoemakers, and weavers, with arbitrary
power, and lived in the luxury of never-
failing offerings of the good things of this
world. He demanded seven maidens—
daughters of his chief adherents—to be given
up to him, declaring that they had been
chosen in connection with the seven seals
of the Book of Life, from the foundations
of the world. They were at once brought
to him. He treated them with the most
atrocious cruelty, compelling them with stripes
and indignity to perform menial services
for him. Some of them ran away to their
parents; but the infatuated people drove
them back again to their tyrant, and he
declared them doomed to utter perdition if
they again attempted to abscond. Government
eventually was compelled to interfere,
and Rosenfeld was imprisoned. But here he
assumed so mild a bearing, and conducted
himself with so much propriety, that he won
over not only the jailer, but one of the city
magistrates, who interfered and got him set
at liberty. Once abroad again, he returned to
all his extravagances with redoubled wildness,
and was again shut up. But this only
augmented the zeal of his followers; and it
was long after his death before the delusion
died away.

If these things are wonderful in other
countries, how much more wonderful are they
in our own and in America, where the people
are accustomed to read, talk, and discuss
every subject with an unconstrained freedom,
which we might naturally expect would leave
few lurking-places for ignorance and
superstition. Yet how marvellous have been, of
late years, the displays of popular credulity
in the British race on both sides of the
Atlantic! Johanna Southcott, Mad Thom of
Kent, Miller, and Joe Smith, have all shown
how multitudinous are the people who will
still believe in anything or anybody. The
Millerites sold their effects, closed their shops;
the young women clothed themselves in
white, and sat upon their trunks, confidently
expecting to float up to heaven with all their
luggage, on the day when Miller declared that
the world would end. It did not end on that
day—but no matter; it was only because
there was an error in the calendar.

Mormonism is a grand triumph of credulity.
Little did Solomon Spalding dream that his
romance of The Manuscript found, would,
under the unblushing rascality of Smith and
Rigdon, erect a church of tens of thousands,
and establish a second Turkey at the Great
Salt Lake. The prodigies of Mormonism,
however, have had their historians as well
as their prophets: let us now devote a few
strokes of the pen to an apostle and his flock
a little nearer home.

There is a neat little watering-place which
may be found by descending the Thames, and
which Londoners find convenient for a few
days' visit in summer. We may as well call
this spot Periwinkle Port as give it any other
name. In this little place—which looks like
half a town, the other half of which has been
swallowed up by the sea; and where all the
remaining houses seem to be looking in
astonishment after the missing ones,—there may
be seen, on fine summer Sundays, a man with
a large umbrella, slowly stalking along the
street, which is bounded on one side by the
houses, and on the other by the sea. His
attention is fixed successively on every house
as he passes, as if he were on the look-out for
lodgings; but not so; he is in quest of the