The sect or society of this singular people originated in England a little more than one hundred years ago. Ann Lee, the young wife of a blacksmith, who had borne several children, conceived the idea that marriage was impure and sinful. She found disciples, and after being persecuted as a fanatic for several years, she professed to have had a direct revelation that she was the female manifestation of the Christ upon earth, the male manifestation having been Jesus, the Deity being considered a duality -- a being composed of both

ML^> AT K\.lZ-lvILL L VM>IN

S3xes. She was, and still is, called " Mother Ann," and is revered by her followers with a feeling akin to worship. With a few of them she came to America, planted *' the church" a few miles from Albany, at a place called Niskayuna, and there died. There are now eighteen distinct communities of this singular people in the United States, the aggregate membership numbering little more than four thousand. The community at jS'ew Lebanon is the most perfect of all in its arrangements, and there the hierarchy of the "Millennial Church" reside. Their strange forms

THE HUDSON.

of -worship, consisting chiefly in singing and dancing ; their quaint costume, their simple manners, their industry and frugality, the perfection of all their industrial operations, their chaste and exemplary lives, and the unsurpassed beauty and picturosqueness of the country in which they \u.'e seated, render a visit to the Shakers of Lebanon a long-to-beremembered event in one's life.