has been working itself, bit by bit, into the action of the Constitution, and the feelings of the people; and now, I believe, neither King nor Parliament, were they so inclined, could put it down.

The sum of the matter then is, that of all the kingdoms which the era of 1848 started in the path of free government, the brave little State of Piedmont alone has persevered to this day. Amid the wide weltering sea of Italian anarchy and despotism, here, and here alone, liberty finds a spot on which to plant her foot. Again we ask, why is this? There is nothing in the past history of the country,—nothing in the present state of the nation,-which can account for it. We must look elsewhere for a solution; and we do not hesitate to avow our firm conviction, that a special Providence has shielded the Constitution of Piedmont, because with that Constitution is bound up the liberties of the ancient martyr Church of the Vaudois. It was the only one of the Italian Constitutions that carried in it so sacred a guarantee of permanency. On the 17th of February 1848 (the day is worth remembering), Charles Albert, by a royal edict, admitted the Waldenses to the enjoyment of all civil and political rights, in common with the rest of their fellow-subjects. Now, for the first time in a thousand years, the trumpet of liberty sounded amid the Vaudois valleys; and the shout of joy which the Alps sent back seemed like the first response to the prayer which had so often ascended from these hills, “How long, O Lord." Would not Sodom have been spared had ten righteous men been found in it? and why not Piedmont, seeing the Waldensian Church was there? Yes, Piedmont is the little Zoar of the Italian plains! Little may its people reck to whom it is they owe their escape. It is nevertheless a truth that, but for the poor Vaudois, whom, instigated by the Pope, they long and ruthlessly laboured to ex

terminate, their country would have been at this same gulph of social demoralization and political re Tuscany, and Naples, and Rome. These last wer Piedmont escaped.

And the country is truly flourishing. It has t day since Charles Albert emancipated the Vaudo can cross its frontier without being struck with th presents to the other Italian States. While they a like a corpse, it is flourishing like the chestnut-tre mountains. The very faces of the people may t

the country is free and prosperous. Its citizens with the cheerful, active air of men who have som and to enjoy, and not with the listless, desponding look which marks the inhabitants of the other Sta Here, too, you miss that universal beggary and v that disfigure and pollute all the other countries o sula. What rich loam the ploughman turns up! nificent vines shade its plains! Public works are railways have been formed, and new houses are bui fewer than a hundred houses were built in Turi which is more, I verily believe, than in all the o towns out of Piedmont taken together. Thus, wh States of Italy are foundering in the tempest, Pie because it carries the Vaudois and their fortunes.

From the hall of the Chamber of Deputies I w Malan to the office of the Gazetta del Popolo, to b to its editors. The Gazetta del Popolo is a daily a circulation of 15,000; and, being sold at a penn sally read by the middle and lower classes. It is Piedmont. Its editors are men of great talent, an the practical good sense and racy style of Cobbett not religious men, neither are they Romanists, th

nally connected with the Church of the State; but they are warm advocates of constitutional government, hearty haters of the Papacy, and have done much to enlighten the public mind, and loosen it from Romanism. They first of all made inquiries respecting the external resemblance of Puseyistic and Popish worship, as I had seen the latter in Italy. They made yet more eager inquiries respecting the progress and prospects of Puseyism in England, and about a then recent declaration of the Archbishop of Canterbury, to the effect that there were only two Bishops in the Church of England that had gone over to Puseyism. They seemed to feel that the fortunes of the Papacy would turn mainly upon the fortunes of Puseyism in England. As regarded the Archbishop, I replied, that I believed in the substantial accuracy of his statement, that there were not more than two members of the episcopate who could be held to be decided Puseyites; and as regarded the progress of Puseyism, I said, that it had been making great and rapid progress, but that the papal aggression, in my humble opinion, had dealt a somewhat heavy blow to both Popery and Puseyism,—that so long as Romanism came begging for toleration, it had found great favour in the eyes of the liberals; but when it came claiming to govern, it had scared away many of its former supporters, who had come to know it better, and that the Protestant feeling which the aggression had evoked on the part of the Court, the Parliament, and the people, had tended to discourage Romanism, and all kindred or identical creeds. They were delighted to hear this, and said that they would baptize the fact in the Gazetta del Popolo, "the assassination of the Papacy by Cardinal Wiseman." Their paper, M. Malan afterwards told me, is published on Sabbaths as well (there are worse things done on that day in Italy, even by bishops), on which day they print their weekly

sermon.

"You won't preach," say they to the prie fore we will;" and it is in their Sabbath sheet that their bitterest assaults upon the priesthood. largely from Scripture: not that they wish to esta gelical truth, of which they know little, but becaus such quotations to be the most powerful weapons can employ against the Papacy. In truth, they a this way the Bible to their countrymen, many of never heard of such a book till then.

I was inexpressibly delighted to find such me wielding such influence, and took the liberty o parting, that we in England had beheld with adm noble stand Piedmont had made in behalf of co government, that we were watching with intense future career of their nation,-that we were cherishi that they would manfully maintain the ground they up, and that in England, and especially in Scotland. the root of all the despotism of the Continent was the that the way to strike for liberty was to strike at R that till the Papacy was overthrown, never would of the world be either free or happy. They assure in these sentiments they heartily concurred, and were the very ideas they were endeavouring to They gave me, on taking leave, a copy of that paper as a souvenir; and on examining it afterwar that the topic of its leading article was quite in our conversation. The great bulk of the libera Piedmont shared even then the ideas of the edi Gazetta del Popolo, and felt that to lay the foundati stitutional liberty, they needs must raze those of Ro is a truth; and not only so,-it is the primal tr science of European liberty. This truth only now

be understood on the Continent. It is the main lesson which the re-action of 1849 has been overruled to teach. All former insurrections have been against kings and aristocrats: even in 1848 the Italians were willing to accept the leadership of the Pope. The perfidies and atrocities of which they have since been the victims have burned the essential tyranny of the papal system into their minds; and the next insurrection that takes place will be against the Papacy.

A constitution, a free press, and a public opinion, are but the outward defences of a divine and immortal principle, which, rooted in the soil of Piedmont, has outlived a long winter, and is now beginning to bud afresh, and to send forth goodlier shoots than ever. To this I next turned. Conducted by M. Malan, I went to the western quarter of Turin, where, amid the gardens and elegant mansions of the suburbs, workmen were digging the foundations of what was to be a spacious building. On this spot the Dominicans in former ages had burned the bodies of the martyrs; and now the Waldensian temple stands here,-a striking proof, surely, of the immortality of truth,—to rise, and live, and speak boldly, on the very spot where she had been bound to a stake, burned, and extinguished, as the persecutor believed. This church, not the least elegant in a city abounding with elegant structures, has since been opened, and is filled every Sabbath with well-nigh a thousand auditors,-the largest congregation, I will venture to say, in Turin.

In 1851 I could visit the cradle of this movement. It had its first rise in the labours of Felix Neff, twenty-five years before; but it was not till the revolution of 1848 that it appeared above ground. Even in 1851, colportage among the Piedmontese was prohibited, though it was allowable to print or import the Bible for the use of the Waldenses, and the