During my late visit to this territory, holy to the Protestant, as Palestine to the descendants of Abraham, I have often enjoyed a " Pisgah view" of the crags and forests, which, like so many cities of refuge, served as sure places of safety for Vaudois fugitives: but with this difference, whereas the Israelitish cities of refuge were for the manslayer, these have been for such as fled from the shedders of human blood. The local advantages afforded in these valleys to a religious community, that may have reason to dread the assaults of an enemy, constitute, in the literal sense of the word "an asylum" fortified by the God of nature. Whether the eye of the traveller looks down from Castelluzzo, Vachera, or Galmont, from the Col de la Croix, or from that of St. Julien ', it rests in every direction upon glens, through which it would be madness for a stranger to hope to find his way. The entrance to each of these is commanded by some mountain ridges or projecting points, where watchmen might give timely notice of the pursuer's approach; and the signal for flight would be followed by escape through one or other of a multitude of tracks; the very number of which would of itself be perplexing. By one the fugitive would wind his way through a

1 All authors agree in opinion, that Julius Cæsar, in his invasion of Gaul, crossed the Alps between Mount Cenis and Mount Viso. May not the Col St. Julien of the Vaudois have taken its name from the Roman general?

labyrinth of paths; by a second he would penetrate into the darkness and complexities of a forest, where rocky beds of torrents, caverns of unknown depth, thick foliage, intertwining branches, and hollow trunks of aged trees, would defy any thing short of a numerous force to make effectual search, more especially in former times, before these valleys were thinned of their natural sylvan productions, to make way for the grain or plantations of man. By a third he would fly to mountain tops, where frequent clouds and mists would shroud him from the intruder's eye. By a fourth he would speed his way along the banks of precipices, which would turn any head, but a mountaineer's, dizzy with affright; and where no foot, but one sure as that of the chamois, could be planted with safety.

At the very time of my visit to these parts, two men, who were pursued by carbineers, despatched in quest of them by the government, defied all attempts to apprehend them; and the year before my arrival, a wretched woman, the victim of oppression, fled from her persecutors with an infant child at her breast, and remained for many weeks undiscovered, although the search was closely continued by the authorities of the district. Thus, even in these present times, now that the country has been well explored, and is better known, it would be rashness to assail the population, were it determined to resist aggression, without a force

large enough to invest the whole territory, and to thread every cleft and brake. What then must it have been when none but the main passes were familiar to any but the natives? The resources for the subsistence of life are as abundant as the hiding-places. In summer, strawberries, and other wild fruits, and in autumn the providential chesnut supply food to the hand that seeks it. In the winter or spring who would encounter the perils of chasing a native, whose knowledge of the snows and torrents would enable him to lead his pursuer to certain destruction? The astonishing preservation of the Vaudois, during a series of thirty-seven persecutions, sufficiently attests the inaccessibility of these glens.

Every mountain country of the same description is equally formidable to pursuers, and favourable to the pursued. There is a branch of the Waldensian Church yet existing on the French side of the Alps in Val Frassiniére, which baffled all the attempts of the government under Louis XIV. and Louis XV. to reduce it to conformity. In the few months, which are not winter, the royal troops ravaged the main village and hamlets, and chased the natives to the rocks and glaciers, without being able to exterminate them. The return of snow and cold obliged the assailants to return, the inhabitants re-took possession of their soil, reconstructed their dwellings, and setting a watch

upon the only accessible approach, abode in peace until the persecution recommenced with the open weather and open paths.

Such being the character of the country of the Vaudois', a natural fastness and bulwark, it is not unreasonable to ask those, who believe that God never would leave himself without a witness, without a pure visible Church existing somewhere, to attach some value to the tradition, that here was folded and fed that little flock, which remained faithful to its Shepherd, when other sheep were following rapacious hirelings". "I dare affirm,” said the late moderator Peyran, in a letter addressed to Cardinal Pacca, and written in a spirit worthy of the best ages, "I dare affirm, without any fear of contradiction from persons who are well-informed, and open to conviction, that the Vaudois, the only people who have at all times opposed themselves successfully to the Roman Pontiff, are a miracle of Grace and Providence; of Grace, in that they have been sustained in their belief; of Provi

Et præcipue in Galliam Cisalpinam, et inter Alpes ubi tutissimum refugium sunt nacti. Thuanus, Hist. lib. 6.

2 "This also will be of use to strengthen the faith of Protestants, who will perceive that God, according to his promise, hath never left himself without witness, as having preserved in the bosom of these Churches most illustrious professors of the Christian religion, which they held in the same purity with which their predecessors had received this precious pledge from the hands of those apostolical men, who first planted these Churches among the Alps and Pyrenean Mountains." Allix,

Bod

dence, in that they have been preserved from destruction 1."

In addition to the reasons derived from their locality, which I have just assigned in support of the probability, that the Vaudois continued in the undisturbed profession of the primitive faith adopted by their forefathers, I must not omit to state what Leger, their native historian, has said upon the subject. The first attempts to force the Vaudois, as a community, into the arms of the Roman Church were made by the house of Savoy. The princes of this line did not come into possession of Piemont till the eleventh or twelfth century. At that period a reigning chief, taking advantage of the divisions that prevailed in Piemont, and of the weakness of the little sovereignties under the Counts of Lucerne, the Marquis of Saluces, and other feudal lords, made himself master of the valleys and the adjoining provinces. Previously to this change of

1 The Protestant cause is indebted to the Rev. Thomas Sims, one of the most disinterested, well-judging, and consistent friends the Vaudois ever had, for collecting and publishing the letters of Peyran, late Moderator of the Vaudois, in a volume, entitled "Historical Defence of the Vaudois or Waldenses, by Jean Rodolphe Peyran." The arguments and chain of historical evidence contained in this work are a very tower of strength. I gladly embrace the opportunity of acknowledging my obligations to it, If Mr. Sims would publish a new edition of Peyran's letters in the form of an English translation, he would do justice to the character of that extraordinary man, and to the cause of which he was at once the ornament and support.