United States or in Utah. M. Remy, despite a "vif désir" to judge favorably of the Saints, could not help owning that the children are mostly grossiers, menteurs, libertins avant l'âge; that they use un langage honteux, comme si les mystères de la polygamie leur avaient été révélés dès l'âge de raison. Apparently since 1855 cette corruption précoce has disappeared. I found less premature depravity than in the children of European cities generally. Mr. J. Hyde also brings against the juvenile Saints severe charges, too general, however, not to be applicable to other lands, "Cheating the confiding is called smart trading;" the same has been said of New England. "Mischievous cruelty, evidences of spirit;" the attribute of Plato's boys and of the Western frontiers generally. "Pompous bravado, manly talk;” not unusual in New York, London, and Paris. "Reckless riding, fearless courage;" so apparently thinks the author of "Guy Livingstone." "And if they outtalk their fathers, outwit their companions, whip their school-teacher, outcurse a Gentile, they are thought to be promising greatness, and are praised accordingly. Every visitor to Salt Lake will recognize the portrait, for every visitor proclaims them to be the most whisky-loving, tobacco-chewing, saucy, and precocious children he ever saw." This is the glance of the anti-Mormon eye pure and simple. Tobacco and whisky are too dear for childhood at the City of the Saints; moreover, twenty years ago, before Tom Brown taught boys not to be ashamed of being called good, a youth at many an English public school would have been "cock of the walk" if gifted with the rare merits described above. I remarked that the juveniles had all the promptness of reply and the peremptoriness of information which characterizes the Scotch and the people of the Eastern States. A half-educated man can not afford to own ignorance. He must answer categorically every question, however beyond his reach; and the result is fatal to the diaries of those travelers who can not diagnostize the disease.
Mormon education is of course peculiar. The climate predisposes to indolence. While the emigrants from the Old Country are the most energetic and hard-working of men, their children, like the race of backwoodsmen in mass, are averse to any but pleasurable physical exertion. The object of the young colony is to rear a swarm of healthy working bees. The social hive has as yet no room for drones, book-worms, and gentlemen. The work is proportioned to their powers and inclinations. At fifteen a boy can use a whip, an axe, or a hoe—he does not like the plow—to perfection. He sits a bare-backed horse like a Centaur, handles is bowie-knife skillfully, never misses a mark with his revolver, and can probably dispose of half a bottle of whisky. It is not an education which I would commend to the generous youth of Paris and London, but it is admirably fitted to the exigencies of the situation. With regard to book-work, there is no difficulty to obtain in Great Salt Lake City that "mediocrity of knowledge be-
