Publisher's Synopsis
The illustrations of this remarkable tale in verse are as extraordinary as the poem itself. We are particularly struck by the picture of "Waif and Walter Leigh," where the young woman looks as if she had come out of "The Bob Ballads," and the young "gent," apparently in evening dress or some very "store-clothes," has that "natural stupidity of countenance which is often mistaken for piety." The story has the usual horrors of Mormonism, - the men with "their degraded lives," and their "hapless so-called wives," among whom, we regret to state, we find Ida Glen, whom the opening canto had pictured as a humble but excellent maiden, lured to her destruction by the siren voice of the Mormon preacher, who told of "Moscow's many towers," "sweet Italia's summer-bloom," and a good deal more. There is very little here that could not be told quite as well in prose.
-"Christian Register," Volume 85 [1906]
