inclined for further acquaintanceship, he will meet all alike ready to welcome him into their cabins or to guide him on his way. He will find the inhabitants of this remote solitude by no means inferior to the rest of the civilized world in general intelligence; whilst their peculiar situation, and the long endurance of oppression to which they have been inured, give a sad but interesting colouring to their conversation as it respects their present prospects. But mention the deeds of their forefathers, talk of all they endured and effected, and the eye of the Vaudois peasant will kindle, and he will expatiate, in all the eloquence of his southern tongue, on their heroic constancy and the holy cause for which they fought. But though it must be conceded that it is difficult to rouse them to express an equal interest in what concerns the present or the future, let not this apparent apathy either discourage or displease those who would seek to benefit them. Let the traveller, even though he be of the energetic race of the Anglo-Saxon, call to mind how long the Vaudois has been chained and trampled on that he lives as it were in the cemetery of his martyred race, “where there is not a rock that is not a monument, not a meadow that has not seen an execution, not a village that does not register its martyrs.”[1]
“I dare not read the history of our persecutions and oppressions,” said a lady of La Torre to the writer; “it would make me hate our enemies; and our religion teaches us to love and pray for them.”
Neither are the men of the valleys behind in their appreciation of the value of education; on the contrary, they set an excellent example in the sacrifices they often make to
- ↑ Muston.
