From Missouri the saints proceeded to Illinois, and on the sixth of April, 1841, with imposing ceremonies, laid at their new city of Nauvoo the corner-stone of the Temple,[1] an immense edifice, without any architectural order or attraction, which in a few months was celebrated every where as not inferior in size and magnificence to that built by Solomon in Jerusalem. Nauvoo is delightfully situated in the midst of a fertile district, and a careful inquirer will not be apt to deny that it became the home of a more industrious, frugal, and generally moral society, than occupied any other town in the state. Whatever charges were preferred against Smith and his disciples, to justify the outrages to which they were subjected, the history of their expulsion from Nauvoo is simply a series of illustrations of the fact that the ruffian population of the neighboring country set on foot a vast scheme of robbery in order to obtain the lands and improvements of the Mormons without paying for them. We have not room for a particular statement of the discontents and conspiracies which grew up in the city, nor for any detail of the aggressions from without. On the 27th of June, 1844, Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered, while under the especial protection of the authorities of the state. A writer in the _Christian Reflector_ newspaper, soon after, observed of Joseph Smith: "Various are the opinions concerning this singular personage; but whatever may be thought in reference to his principles, objects, or moral character, all agree that he was a most remarkable man.... Notwithstanding the low origin, poverty, and profligacy of these mountebanks, they have augmented their numbers till more than 100,000 persons are now numbered among the followers of the Mormon Prophet, and they never were increasing so rapidly as at the time of his death. Born in the very lowest walks of life, reared in poverty, educated in vice, having no claims to even common intelligence, coarse and vulgar in deportment, the Prophet Smith succeeded in establishing a religious creed, the tenets of which have been taught throughout America; the Prophet's virtues have been rehearsed in Europe; the ministers of Nauvoo have found a welcome in Asia; Africa has listened to the grave sayings of the seer of Palmyra; the standard of the Latter-Day Saints has been reared on the banks of the Nile; and even the Holy Land has been entered by the emissaries of this impostor. He founded a city in one of the most beautiful situations in the world, in a beautiful curve of the 'Father of Waters,' of no mean pretensions, and in it he had collected a population of twenty-five thousand, from every part of the world. The acts of his life exhibit a character as incongruous as it is remarkable. If we can credit his own words and the testimony of eye-witnesses, he was at the same time the vicegerent of