se, to one subject. I told them that I was not unacquainted with
their glorious history;--that from a child I had known the noble deeds
of their fathers, who had received an equal place in my veneration with
the men of old, "who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought
righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouth of lions. And others
had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and
imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted,
were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and
goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; of whom the world was
not worthy;"--and that, next to the hills of my own land, hallowed, too,
with martyr-blood, I loved the mountains within whose shadow my
wandering steps had now brought me. The eyes of my Vaudois friends
kindled; they were not unconscious, I could see, of their noble lineage;
and they were visibly touched by the circumstance that a stranger from a
distant land--drawn thither by sympathy with the great struggles of
their nation--should come to visit their mountains. Every object in any
way connected with their history, and especially with their
persecutions, was carefully pointed out to me. "There," said they, "is
our frontier church, the first of the Vaudois candles," pointing to a
white edifice that gleamed out upon us amid woods and rocks, on the
summit of a hill, soon after leaving Pignerolo. They mentioned, too,
with peculiar emphasis, the year of the last great massacre of their
brethren. The memory of that transaction, I feel assured, will perish
only with the Vaudois race. Nor can I forget the evident pride with
which, on nearing the valley of Lucerne, they pointed to the giant form
of their Castelluzzo, now looming through the shades of night, and told
me that in the caves of that mighty rock their fathers found shelter,
when the valley beneath was covered with armed men.

Nowhere had I seen more luxuriant vines. They were festooned, too, after
the manner of those I had seen among the Alps; but here the effect was
more beautiful. They were literally stretched out over entire fields in
an unbroken web of boughs. Clothed with luxuriant foliage, they looked
like another azure canopy extended over the soil. There was ample room
beneath for the ploughman and his bullocks. The golden beams, struggling
through the massy foliage, fell in a mellow and finely tinted shower on
the newly ploughed soil. Wheat is said