LITERATURE.

Southland Times, Issue 915, 13 March 1868, Page 3

LITERATURE.

«> New America, 1867. BY WILLIAM HEPWOBTH DIXON. "With illustrations from engraved photographs. 2 vols. London : Htjbst akd Bxackett, Puhlishers. InVEBCABGIIL : LOUIS EODGEKS. Tinder this title there has been issued from the London press a work upon the present social and religious condition of America, which possesses more than ordinary claims . to consideration. It possesses a fund of entertaining anecdote, with keen and philo- \ sophie disquisitions on the traits and humors of our transatlantic cousins, showing their peculiarities, yet without the tinge of supercilious irony that very often accompanies the writings of authors of American life. The success that it has met with, it being now in its seventh edition, demonstrates the interest J on the part of the reading public. Throughout the whole work there is a genuine air of truth, a total absence of exaggeration; and it possesses the additional interest of Bpeaking of recent American events still fresh in the memory of most of us. The preface is modest, but to the point. Mr Dixon says: — " Some studies of past times which have long occupied my pen, led me last summer to the James River and to Plymouth Sock. I went out in search of an old world, and found a new one. East, west, north, and south, I met with new ideas, new purposes, new methods ; in short, with a new America. The men who planted these Eree States — doing the noblest work that England has achieved in history — were spurred into their course by two great passions, a large love of liberty, a deep sense of religion, and, in our great plantation, liberty and religion exercise a power on the forms of social and domestic life, unknown at home. In the heart of solid societies and conservative churches we find the most singular doctrines, the most audacious experiments ; and it is only after seeing what kind of forces are at work within them that we can adequately admire the strength of these societies and churches. "What I saw of the churches now being wrought in the actual life of man and woman on the American soil, under the power of these master passions, is pictured in these pages." The opening chapters are devoted to a description of American manners in the far west ; and there is introduced a lively discussion on the inconveniences of travelling by the overland mail route to California via Salt Lake. As this is the route the Pacific railway will take, it may be as well to give our readers an idea of the dangers and difficulties to be met with at present, and what a great boon the completion of the line will confer on the traveller : — "Along the mountain road, in every train ; among the callous teamsters ; among the raw emigrants; among the passing strangers ; among the resident stockmen; there is one topic of conversation night and day — the Indians. Every red man moves in this region

with the scalping-lcnife in his hancL Spottiswood, one of the smartest agents of the overland mail, told me that he saw a white man taken from his waggon, and burnt to death on a pile of bacon. The antelope hunter of Virginia, Dale, was killed only a few day ago. Between Esk Mountains and Sulphur Spring, a train was stopped by Cheynnes, and eighteen men, women, and children were massacred and mutilated. Two young girls were carried off, and after being much abused by the Indians, were sent into Fort Laramie, and exchanged for sacks of flour from the quarter-mas-ter's store." Mr Pixon then introduces the reader i to the city of the Mormons, grahphically illustrating their religious opinions, the principal of which are comprised under the following headings : — " 1. God is a person, with the form and flesh of man. 2. Man is a part of the substance of G-od, and with himself became a God. 3. Man was not created by God, but existed from all eternity. 4. Man is not born in Bin, and is not accountable for offences other than his own. 5. The earth is a colony of embodied spirits, one of many such settlements in space. 6. God is president of the immortals, having under him four orders of beings. 8. The kingdom of G-od has been again founded on the earth ; the time has come for the saints to take possession of their own ; but by virtue, not by violence, by industry, not by force." Further on, Mr Dixon visits the various, religious orders, the Shakers, the Insurrectionists, the Spiritualists, the Bible Communists, and a host of others. In every case he gives the headings of the belief of each denomination, in a most fair and dispassionate manner, dwelling upon the good which has resulted from the teachings of some, and carefully avoiding anything like cant, or hypocrisy. | Speaking of the manners of the Americans, we cannot conclude better than by giving the following extract : — ; " The Yankee of our books and farces — I the man who was for eyer whittling a yard of stick, putting his heels out of window, grinding his quid of pigtail, squirting his tobacco-juice in your face, while, in breathless and unsuspecting humour, he ran, to your amazement and amusement, through a string of J guesses, reckonings, and calculations, as to' what you were, whence you came, what you were doing, how much money you were worth — as to wether you were single or married, how many children you had, what you thought of everything, and whether your grandmother was alive or j dead — that f u ii embodiment of the great idea of Personal Freedom is not so common ■ and so lively as he would seem to have been some twenty years ago. Seeking for him everywhere, finding a shadow of him only, and that but seldom, I have missed him very much ; an element of extravagance and humour that would have been very welcome to me in long, grave journeys, which were often a thousand miles in silence. In the waggon from Salt Lake to Kearney, in the boat from Omaha to St. Louis, in the car from Indianopolis to New York, I have often longed for the coming of one of those vivacious rattlers, who used (as we have read) to poke his stick into your ribs, his nose into your conversation, to tell you everything he didn't know, and to pull 'out your eye-teeth generally ; but he no more came in answer to my wish than the witty cabman comes in Dublin, the stolid Pasha in Damascus, the punctilious Don in Madrid — those friends of our imagination, whom we love so much on paper, and whom we nerer meet in our actual lives ! In the room of this lost humourist, you find at your elbow in the car, in the steamboat, at the dinner-table, a man, who may be keen and bright, but who is also taciturn and grave ; asking few questions, giving cute answers ; a man occupied and reserved ; on the whole, rather English in his silence and his pride than Yankee (of the book pattern) in his loquacity and his smartness. Perhaps he whittles ; perhaps he chews ; assuredly he spits. What impels a man to whittle when he is busy — while he is planning a campaign, composing an epic, mapping out a town ? It is an English habit, lost to us at home, like rocking in arm-chairs and speaking through the nose ? I hardly think so. It is a relic of some Indian custom ?"