it may be safe to do what could not be done at present but at the
risk of damaging, and perhaps ruining, their cause. It does not follow
that the Tuscan priesthood have not the guilt of blood to answer for. If
the confessors of the Gospel in that land are not perishing by the
guillotine, they are pining in prisons, and sinking into the grave, by
reason of the choking stench, the disgusting vermin, and the
insufficient food, to which they are exposed.

But the condition of these victims, perishing unknown and unpitied in
the fangs of an ecclesiastical tyranny, is not the most distressing
spectacle which Tuscany at this hour presents. Theirs is an enviable
state, compared with that of the great body of the people. These occupy
but a larger prison, and groan in yet stronger fetters; while their
captivity is uncheered by any such hope as that which sustains the
Tuscan confessors of the truth. Mistrust of their Church is widely
spread in the country. There is no religion in Tuscany. There is as
little morality. The marriage vow is but little regarded, and the
seducer boasts of his triumphs over married chastity, as if they were
praiseworthy deeds. Thousands have plunged into atheism. Of those who
have not gone this length, the great body are dissatisfied, ill at ease,
without confidence in the doctrines of Rome, but ignorant of a more
excellent way. Straitly shut up, they grope blindfolded round the walls
of their prison-house, wistfully turning their eyes to any ray of light
that strikes in through its crevices. How this state of things may end
is known only to God;--whether in the gradual spread of Gospel light,
and the peaceful fall of that system which has so long enthralled the
intellect and soul of the Tuscans; or whether, as a result of the
growing exasperation and deepening horrors of these bondsmen, they may
give a violent wrench to the pillars of the ecclesiastical and social
fabric, and pull it down upon the heads of themselves and their
oppressors.

I may avail myself of this opportunity of introducing a few recent facts
relative to the analogous work in Genoa; and this I do because these
facts are of a character which may enable the reader more clearly to
conceive of the present religious condition of Italy, and the state of
the movement in that country.

The north of Italy and kingdom of Sardinia, as I have already said,
since the Constitution granted in 1848, is open to the promulgation of
evangelical truth