for a moment? There it
has hung unlifted age after age, concealing, with its impenetrable
folds, all that mortals would most like to know. Myriads and myriads
have passed within, but not one has ever given back voice, or look, or
sign, to those they left behind, and from whom never before did they
conceal thought or wish. Why is this? Do they not still think of us? Do
they not still love us? Would they softly speak to us if they could?
What gulf divides them? Ah! how silent are the dead!

Close by the great highway into Italy lie the "Valleys of the Vaudois."
One might pass them without being aware of their near presence, or that
he was treading upon holy ground;--so near to the world are they, and
yet so completely hidden from it. Ascend the little hill on the south of
Turin, and follow with your eye the great wall of the Alps which bounds
the plain on the north. There, in the west, about thirty miles from
where you stand, is a tall pyramidal-shaped mountain, towering high
above the other summits. That is Monte Viso, which rises like a
heaven-erected beacon, to signify from afar to the traveller the land of
the Waldenses, and to call him, with its solemn voice, to turn aside and
see the spot where "the bush burned and was not consumed." We shall make
a short, a very short visit to these valleys, than which Europe has no
more sacred soil. But first let us speak of some of the bulwarks which
an all-wise Providence has erected in our day around a Church and people
whose existence is one of the great living miracles of the world.

The revolutions which swept over Italy in 1848 were the knell of the
other Italian States, but to Piedmont they were the trumpet of liberty.
No man living can satisfactorily explain why the same event should have
operated so disasterously for the one, and so beneficially for the
other. No reason can be found in the condition of the country itself:
the thing is inexplicable on ordinary principles; and the more
intelligent Piedmontese at this day speak of it as a miracle. But so is
the fact. Piedmont is a constitutional kingdom; and I went with M.
Malan, himself a Waldensian, and a member of the Chamber of Deputies, to
see the hall where their Parliament sits. A spacious flight of steps
conducts to a noble hall, in form an ellipse, and surmounted by a dome.
At one end of the ellipse hangs a portrait of the President, and
underneath is his richly gilt chair, with a crimson-covered table before
it.