1

showed that he had none so worthy as they. He sent a messenger to Arnaud, inviting him to join his service, with his followers, and granting permission to the Vaudois to return to their native valleys. Arnaud obeyed his sovereign ; and his soldiers were as active and courageous in the war against the French as they had ever been in defense of their native vales. Soon the exiled Vaudois heard of the happy change, and came in glad troops over the Alps to occupy the homes of their fathers. No hope of gain or prospect of advantage could detain the gentle race in foreign lands. They left their thriving plantations in Brandenburg, their farms in Germany, or their factories in England, and with psalms of triumph hastened to revive their apostolic church in its ancient seat. Lucerna, San Martino, and Perouse were again filled with a rejoicing people; and the lovely landscapes of the sacred vales shone in new beauty, the temples of an untarnished faith.

Clustered like hunted chamois on the pinnacles of the rock, the Vaudois now sought eagerly for some method of escape.' But as yet there seemed no prospect of deliverance. The enemy lay encamped on every side of the Balsille; his watch-fires dispelled the darkness of the night, and sentinels, posted thickly around, closed up every avenue of flight. Arnaud and his brave companions were guarded by a circle of foes who had resolved that no Vaudois should be left alive upon the mountains. But as the night advanced a friendly mist, sent in answer to their prayers, slowly rose from the deep glens and covered the whole valley with a humid veil. The agile mountaineers, led by a skillful guide, crept down the slippery rocks, climbed in single file over the deep chasms of the Germanasca, and reached the base of Guinevert. Here they cut steps in the hardened snow, and, with terrible suffering, dragged themselves on their hands and knees up the steep declivities, until at length they stood on a wide glacier, far above the reach of the enemy. A clamor of thanks-valor of the eight hundred, the wisdom and giving arose from the little company as they felt once more that they were free. The morning broke; the French sprang up the hill to seize their certain prey; they found only the bare rock, the empty castle, and hastened, in their rage, to follow the Vaudois along their mountain-path.2

Here, however, they were easily eluded by their active foe. The Vaudois kept upon the loftiest of the mountains, feeding on the foliage of the fir-trees and drinking the half-melted snow. Sometimes they leaped down in fierce forays upon the fertile valleys; often they shot down the invaders from some lofty crag, or swept away the flocks of the Savoyard settlers. Still they hovered fondly over their native scenes, and lingered, with scarcely a hope in the future, above the torrents and the crags they had loved in youth. To their simple and tender hearts these last arduous days must have seemed the saddest and most cheerless of all. From their post on the mountains of Angrogna they might look down into the fairest of the Italian vales; they saw the softly-swelling hills encircle the fertile fields; the laughing torrent; the budding groves of mulberry and chestnut; the grateful gardens around their early homes; the silent churches; and the blossom-covered lawns. But all these they were to enjoy no more. An active foe pursued them from peak to peak, and they must soon fly to their most secret caves."

But in a moment all was changed, and the Glorious Return was accomplished by a sudden revolution. On the 21st of May, 1690, as Arnaud and his heroes lingered around Angrogna, they learned that the Duke of Savoy had joined the alliance of England and Holland against France. The duke now needed the aid of all his subjects, and the heroic valor of the Vaudois

Such was the Glorious Return. But for the

2

The va

piety of Henry Arnaud, and the counsels of the
aged Janavel, the Vaudois might still have wan-
dered in foreign lands, and their lovely vales
have remained in the possession of strangers.
But they were now firmly seated in their ancient
home, never to be driven from it again. The
Jesuits and the popes still plotted their ruin;
and when the war was over Victor Amadeus,
with his usual bad faith, revived the persecu-
tion in the valleys. In 1698 a Jesuit and a
number of monks visited all the vales, and made
their report to the pope. In consequence the
duke issued a decree expelling all the French
Protestants from the country, and forbidding
the Vaudois from having any intercourse, on
matters of religion, with the subjects of Louis
XIV. Three thousand persons were driven
from the valleys by this cruel edict.
rious disabilities now imposed upon the Vaudois
served to render their lives painful, and expose
them to the penalties of the hostile courts. They
were forbidden to exercise certain professions,
to purchase property beyond certain limits, to
settle out of their valleys even for trade, to op-
pose the conversion of their children to Roman-
ism, or to make proselytes themselves. They
were held in a kind of bondage, and treated as
an inferior race. It was a common practice
with the priests of Turin to carry off the chil-
dren of the Vaudois and educate them in the
Romish faith. In 1730 severe instructions were
issued against the people of the valleys; and
throughout the eighteenth century the church
of Rome labored by every art to extirpate its
rival church upon the Alps. The Jesuits re-
newed their activity; the Vaudois were often
imprisoned, and their pastors ill-treated. The
jealous popes looked with superstitious dread
upon the gentle moderators of the blooming
valleys.

Nor was this without reason; for as the age

The

perfect religious freedom prevailed in the valleys, and the iron tyranny of Rome and the Jesuits was crushed by the offspring of revolutionary France. A century before, Louis XIV. had nearly secured the destruction of the Alpine church; in 1800 it sprang up into new vigor under the shelter of the French arms. pastors of the valleys returned Napoleon's favors with sincere gratitude, and lamented his final defeat as that of a friend. It is probable that the unsparing conqueror had no more truthful admirers than the pure and lofty spirits whom he had set free upon their mountains.

advanced in liberality the Alpine church became | poleon. The impulsive hero was touched by to Italy an example and a teacher. From Pra their history, listened to their complaints, and del Tor had descended, in the Middle Ages, a granted them all they required. For the first throng of Vaudois missionaries; in the eight-time, perhaps, since the days of Hildebrand, a eenth century it was still the centre of advancing thought. Within the circle of the Alps the church flourished with singular vigor. Persecution failed to check its growth; the churches multiplied; the schools increased; the people of the valleys were better educated than those of Turin or Rome. Poor, feeble, an isolated and hated race, shut out from the common privileges of their fellow-subjects, from colleges, schools, hospitals, and the liberal professions, the Vaudois were still a power whose influence was often felt where it was not seen. The people of Turin saw constantly before them the spectacle of a church that never persecuted nor With the restoration of 1814-1815, Victor reviled; of a race that steadily advanced in Emanuel IV. came to the throne of Sardinia, moral and intellectual vigor; of a nation of and the Vaudois once more sank to the condiheroes who had ever defended liberty of con- tion of a subjugated race, alien and oppressed. science when all Italy beside had bowed in serv- They were known to be advocates of freedom itude to Rome. The Vaudois grew popular and advance; the pope and the Jesuits again with the scholars of Sardinia, with the people, ruled at Turin; the church and state again and even with the court. They were still op- united to destroy the church of the mountains.2 pressed by unjust laws; yet toward the close From 1814 to 1848 the Vaudois suffered indigof the century a Vaudois church had sprung nities and deprivations scarcely surpassed in up at Turin, and the liberal ideas of the valleys the earlier persecutions. All the ancient opwere penetrating the north of Italy. The mod-pressive laws were revived. They were forerators of the Alps became the leaders of an intellectual movement that was destined to spread from Balsille to Tarento.

bidden to hold any civil office, to pursue their labors on Catholic festivals, to hold land beyond a certain limit, to make proselytes, or build new Yet the only period of real freedom the Vau-churches except in the least favorable locations, dois had ever known since the papal usurpa

tions sprang from the conquests of the first Na- 1 Muston, ii. p. 308 et seq..

2 Id., ii. 343.

to marry into papist families, or to give, sell, or lend their Bibles to Catholics. Romish missions were established in their midst, and a convent and a church were built at La Tour to complete the conversion of the people. When Dr. Gilly visited the valleys in 1822 he was struck by the beauty of their landscape, the simplicity and purity of the people; he was touched and grieved to find that they still labored under a rule of persecution, and that liberty of conscience, for which they had ever sighed, was still denied them by unforgiving Rome.

in caves and ravines where Janavel and Henry Arnaud had once hid in perpetual gloom. The snow-clad peaks and the icy torrents glowed in the illumination of freedom. But a still more remarkable spectacle was witnessed at Turin. There for three centuries the Jesuits had labored and waited for the extermination of the Vaudois. In the public square, amidst its splendid palaces, had died a long succession of martyrs, the victims of its priests and kings. In its dreadful dungeons, noisome with disease, thousands of the people of the valleys had pined But the church of the Alps was now to rise and wasted away. What unuttered woes had from its desolation, and to shine out with new been borne in its prisons for freedom's sake no lustre in the eyes of all Europe. The free prin- tongue could tell, no fancy picture. Its conciples it had always inculcated, the liberty of vents had been filled with the stolen children conscience it had ever defended, were become of the Vaudois; its stony walls had heard the the ruling ideas of every cultivated Italian. vain complaints of parents and brothers without Turin and Sardinia had learned to look with relenting. From its gates had issued forth those wonder, admiration, and remorse upon the love- dreadful crusades, whose throngs of brigands, ly valleys they had so often desolated, and the soldiers, priests, inquisitors were so often let innocent people they had so constantly tortured loose upon the valleys to do the work of fiends; and oppressed. The Sardinian king, Charles Al- from Turin had come the impalers of women, bert, stood at the head of the Italian reformers. the murderers of children, the Spaniards who He was resolved to give freedom to the Vau-flung old men over beetling crags; the Irish dois; to atone, if possible, for the crimes of his who surpassed even the enormities of the Italancestors; to make some faint return to the peo-ians; the Jesuits and Franciscans who urged ple of the valleys for their long lesson of patience, resignation, and truth. Amidst the acclamations of his subjects, he prepared (1847) to extend freedom of conscience to the churches of the Alps. A patriotic excitement arose in their favor. A petition was drawn up at Turin urging the king to enfranchise the Vaudois and the Jews. Its first signer was the poet, artist, and statesman, the Marquis D'Azeglio; and his name was followed by a long list of professors, lawyers, physicians, and even liberal ecclesiastics and priests. Cheers were given for the Vaudois at public dinners in Pignerol and Turin, and all Piedmont wept over their history and rejoiced in their approaching triumph. On the 17th of February, 1848, the royal decree was issued giving freedom to the valleys.'

forward the labor of destruction; the nobles and princes, the pillars of chivalry, who looked on and applauded crimes for which Dante could have found no fitting punishment amidst the deepest horrors of his pit.

And now all Turin, repentant and humble, resolved to do honor to the Alpine church. A day of rejoicing had been appointed for liberated Piedmont, and a deputation from the Vaudois was sent to the capital. As they issued from the valleys they were saluted every where with loud vivas for "our Vaudois Brothers," for "Liberty of Conscience." The citizens of Turin received them with unbounded hospitality, and the gentle Vaudois took part in the grand procession; they were preceded by a group of young girls clothed in white, adorned It was received by the simple and generous with blue girdles, and each bearing a little banVaudois with a limitless gratitude. A thrill of ner. Six hundred persons composed the Vaujoy ran over the beautiful vales, and Lucerna, dois deputation, the most noted in the stately San Martino, and Perouse resounded with pageant. To them, as a mark of honorable hymns of thanksgiving upon the return of that retribution, was assigned the first place at the stable freedom which had been ravished from head of the procession as it moved through the them eight centuries ago. In every village streets of Turin. The persecuted of a thousand there were processions of the young, with ban-years walked the leaders of Italian freemen. ners and patriotic songs; the blue colors of renewed Italy shone on every breast; the gentle race forgot all their injuries and their woes, to mingle freely with their Romish brethren, and to celebrate their victory in unbounded love. At night the wonderful scenery of the valleys was set off by a general illumination. Pignerol glittered with light; St. John and La Tour shone at the opening of the defiles; far up, ascending toward the Alps, every crag and cliff had its bonfire, and the gleam of a thousand lights startled the wild mountains, and flashed

Muston, ii. p. 391 et seq.

The city rang with cheers for the Vaudois; flowers were showered upon them from the balconies; men rushed from the throng to salute, to embrace the patient mountaineers; even liberal priests cheered them as they went by; the women of Turin smiled upon the daughters of the valleys. Yet, as the Vaudois moved through the squares hallowed by the torments of their early martyrs, beside the prisons where their ancestors had died by thousands, the palaces where Jesuits and princes had often planned their total extirpation, they were amazed at

1 Muston, ii. 392.

people, the vindictive pope proclaims his undying hostility against the wise and the good of every land. But should the Holy Father and the society of Loyola turn their eyes to the Vaudois Alps, they may read their doom graven on each heaven-piercing peak. There may be seen a spectral company of the hallowed dead writing with shadowy fingers a legend on the rocks; the tiny babe crushed beneath the soldier's heel; the fair mother hewn to pieces on the snow; the old man of ninety burned to

ashes on the fatal pyre. They write: "Whoever shall harm one of these little ones, it were better for him that a millstone had been hanged about his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea!"

[NOTE. The readers of the above article will be in

terested to know that nine of the illustrations have been copied from the engravings in Leger's "History," printed in 1669, and are therefore nearly contemporary with the events they depict. The two views of scenery are from nature.]

some incidental charges-within twenty-five thousand dollars is considered a proof of good management and economy, we can see that the amount of capital employed, and the extent of the interests involved in this business, are almost incalculable.

ocean steamer. There are thirty or forty of these huge structures, embodying the highest results of naval science and skill yet realized by mankind, that pertain to the port of New York, and connect it directly or indirectly with every important commercial point on the globe. There are lines running to several different The sources of profit for a line of European ports in England and Scotland-to Germany-steamers are three-regular passengers, freights, to France-to the Isthmus of Darien, where they connect, through the Isthmus, with other lines from Panama to all points on the western coasts of North and South America-to the West Indies, and to Brazil. Sometimes eight or ten of these steamers leave the port on the same day. There are more than a hundred of such vessels, of the first-class, belonging to the different lines; and when we consider that

and emigrants. Different lines depend, in different proportions, on these several elements. Perhaps the line in which the three are most equally and fully represented is that of Williams and Guion. Their line is composed of eight first-class iron steamers, of three thousand tons each, and are celebrated for their sea-going qualities. They carry the United States mails, and are commanded by gentlemen of large ex