The Shakers of America, though slightly cracked as to their
religious tenets, and given to curious excesses of anthropomorphic speculation, are by the testimony of all observers good people, industrious, self-sacrificing, and pure. They seem to have found a most incapable exponent in Elder Evans, who has sent to us an unintelligible rigmarole in explanation of their tenets ; but it is too bad to accuse them, as the Pall Mall Gazette does, of advo- cating promiscuous intercourse. They teach the exact contrary, holding all sexual intercourse, licit or illicit, equally impure, and act, to far as most numerous visitors can observe, most straitly up to their precepts. The observations range over many years, and have been made by men of very various opinions. The Gazette has perhaps confounded the Shakers with followers of M. Noyes.