I shall have occasion hereafter to refer to the loss of the one hundred and sixteen pages mentioned in the preceding letter, and to the manner in which they were lost; as this fact will not only tend to illustrate Harris' character, but to throw some farther light upon the sinuous track which was pursued to palm off the BOOK OF MORMON as a divine revelation. Whether Smith and Cowdery were acting alone at the time referred to by Mr. Hale, or were then deriving their illumination from Rigdon, I have no means of determining. It is highly probable, however, that they then had access to a copy of the manuscript written by Mr. Spaulding, of which we shall soon speak, and this copy was undoubtedly obtained through the agency of Rigdon. The true authorship of what constitutes the basis of the BOOK OF MORMON, unquestionably belongs to Mr. Spaulding. I cannot think, however, that the Book of Mormon is an exact copy of Mr. Spaulding's "_Historical Romance_," as Mrs. Davison very properly denominates it. No intelligent or well educated man would have been guilty of so many anachronisms and gross grammatical errors as characterise every part of the Book of Mormon. While Mr. Spaulding's _Historical Romance_ is unquestionably the ground-work of this volume, the christianized character of the work--the hortatory clauses about salvation through the blood of Christ--and the adaptation of the whole to meet the peculiar religious views of Martin Harris, and to tally with the pretended discovery of Jo Smith, are evidently parts of the work added to Mr. Spaulding's manuscript. In farther corroboration of this idea, I will just advert to two facts. _First_, in this record, some portions of which were professedly written six hundred years before the appearance of our Saviour, the various _dramatis personæ_ seem as familiar with the events of the New Testament and all the doctrines of the gospel, as any preacher of the present day. Now no intelligent and well educated man would be guilty of such a solecism as that of putting into the mouth of a Jew who lived four hundred years before the birth of Christ, a flippant discourse about things as though they were then familiarly known, when they did not occur till some five hundred years afterwards. Hence I infer that these parts were added to the original document of Mr. Spaulding by Jo Smith, Cowdery, Rigdon, or some of the fraternity.--_Another_ reason, leading me to the opinion that considerable alterations were made in the document referred to, stands in connection with the fact to which I have already adverted--the loss of the one hundred and sixteen pages, which were never replaced. These pages were lost in the following way. Harris brought home the manuscript pages and locked them up in his house thinking them quite safe. But his wife, who was not then, nor ever afterwards became a convert to Mormonism, took the opportunity, when he was out, to seize the