manuscript could not be found?  Long official life appears to be the rule at St. James’s.  Mr. Wm. Relph, who died last year, was a churchwarden at the place for 21 years; Mr. Bannister has been in office as churchwarden for nearly as long; the person who was beadle up to last year had officiated in that capacity for nearly eleven years; the organist has been at the church above 15 years; the mistress of the school belonging the church has been at her post about as long; and the schoolmaster has been in office 13 or 14 years.  If long service speaks well for a place, the facts we have given are creditable alike to the church and the officials.  Mr. Wilson, who gets about 300 pounds a year, is well-respected by all; he manages to keep down unpleasant feuds; regulates the district peacefully, if slowly, deserves a handsomer church, and would be quite willing, we believe, to be its architect if one were ordered.

THE MORMONS.

There are about 1,100 different religious creeds in the world, and amongst them all there is not one more energetic, more mysterious, or more wit-shaken than Mormonism.  It is a mass of earnest “abysmal nonsense,” an olla-podrida of theological whimsicalities, a saintly jumble of pious staff made up—­if we may borrow an idea—­of Hebraism, Persian Dualism, Brahminism, Buddhistic apotheosis, heterodox and orthodox Christianity, Mohammedanism, Drusism, Freemasonry, Methodism, Swedenborgianism, Mesmerism, and Spirit-rapping.  We might go on in our elucidation; but what we have said will probably be sufficient for present purposes.  There are some deep-swimming fish in the “waters of Mormon;” but the piscatorial shoal is sincere enough, though mortally odd-brained and dreamy.  On the 22nd of September, 1827, a rough-spun American, named Joseph Smith, belonging to a family reputed to be fond of laziness, drink, and untruthfulness, and suspected of being somewhat disposed to sheep-stealing, had a visit from “the angel of the Lord.”  He had previously been told that his sins were forgiven; that he was a “chosen instrument,” &c., and on the day named Joseph found, somewhere in Ontario, a number of gold plates, eight inches long and seven wide, nearly as thick as tin, fastened together by three rings, and bearing inscriptions, in “Reformed Egyptian,” relative to the history of America “from its first settlement by a colony that came from the Tower of Babel at the confusion of tongues, to the beginning of the 5th century of the Christian era.”  These inscriptions were originally got up by a prophet named Mormon were, as before stated, found by Joseph Smith, were read off by him to a man rejoicing in the name of Oliver Cowdery, and they constitute the contents of what is now known as the Book of Mormon.  Smith did not translate the “Reformed Egyptian” openly—­if he had been asked to do so, he would have said, “not for Joe;” he got behind a blanket in order to do the job, considering