After a time the most of the new citizens returned to the homes they had purchased for little or nothing from the now exiled founders of the beautiful city. But Nauvoo never prospered under its new masters. Out of sympathy for those who had redeemed it from a wilderness, and some portions of it from a swamp, its fields and gardens refused to yield in their strength to the industry of other hands. Its decline was as rapid and disastrous as its rise had been sudden and glorious. A French communistic society had purchased considerable property in the deserted city, and into their hands passed the splendid temple the Saints at such sacrifice had erected. Externally, the building had been completed in the spring of 1846, even to the gilding of the angel and the trumpet at the top of the spire. During the winter of 1845-6 various rooms of the temple were dedicated for ordinance work, and there hundreds of the faithful Saints received their endowments--the sacred mysteries of the faith. The main court of worship was also prepared; and on the evening of April 30th, 1846, the building was privately dedicated, Joseph Young, the senior president of the First Council of Seventy, offering the dedicatory prayer. On the first of May, 1846, under the direction of Apostles Orson Hyde and Wilford Woodruff, the edifice was publicly dedicated, according to the order of the Holy Priesthood, revealed through the Prophet Joseph Smith. The temple was always a source of envy to the enemies of the Saints, and it was feared that if it continued to stand it would be a bond between its exiled builders and the city from which they had been cruelly driven, and an inducement for them to return. On the tenth of November, 1848, an incendiary, therefore, set it on fire, and the tower was destroyed, and the whole building so shattered, that on the twenty-seventh of May, 1850, a tornado blew down the north wall. I was informed by M. M. Morrill, who at the time of my visit was mayor of Nauvoo, and, by the way, one who had assisted in its defense when attacked by the mob, that one Joseph Agnew, confessed to being the incendiary. Finally all the walls were pulled down and the stone hauled away for building purposes, until now, not one stone stands upon another. Even the very foundation has been cleared away, and the excavation for the basement filled up and the site covered with inferior buildings. At the time of my visit, in the summer of 1885, the population of Nauvoo numbered about seventeen hundred, nine-tenths of whom were Germans. The principal occupation is grape-growing, vineyards covering some portions of the city plat, which was once the principal business center. The whole place has a half-deserted, half-dilapidated appearance, and seems to be withering under a blight, from which it refuses to recover.