se confessors fewer in number, and their territory more restricted.
At last all that remained to the Vaudois were only three valleys at the
foot of Monte Viso; and if we examine their structure, we will find them
arranged with special reference to the war the Church was here called to
wage.

The three valleys are the Val Martino, the Val Angrona, and the Val
Lucerna. Nothing could be simpler than their arrangement; at the same
time, nothing could be stronger. The three valleys spread out like a
fan,--radiating, as it were, from the same point, and stretching away in
a winding vista of vineyards, meadows, chestnut groves, dark gorges, and
foaming torrents, to the very summits and glaciers of the Alps. Nearly
at the point of junction of the Val Angrona and the Val Lucerna stands
La Tour, the capital of the valleys. It consists of a single street (for
the few off-shoots are not worth mentioning) of two-storey houses,
whitewashed, and topped with broad eves, which project till they leave
only a narrow strip of sky visible overhead. The town winds up the hill
for a quarter of a mile or so, under the shadow of the famous
Castelluzzo,--a stupendous mountain of rock, which shoots up, erect as a
column on its pedestal, to a height of many thousands of feet, and, in
other days, sheltered, as I have said, in its stony arms, the persecuted
children of the valleys, when the armies of France and Savoy gathered
round its base. How often I watched it, during my stay there, as its
mighty form now became lost, and now flashed forth from the mountain
mists! Over what sad scenes has that rock looked! It has seen the
peaceful La Tour a heap of smoking ruins, and the clear waters of the
Pelice, which meander at its feet, red with the blood of the children of
the valleys. It has heard the wrathful execrations of armed men
ascending where the prayers and praises of the Vaudois were wont to
come, borne on the evening breeze,--scenes unspeakably affecting, but
which, nevertheless, from the principle which they embodied, and the
Christian heroism which they evoked, add dignity to humanity itself.
When we would rebut those universal libels which infidels have written
upon our race, we point to the Vaudois. However corrupt whole nations
and continents may have been, that nature which could produce the
Vaudois must have originally possessed, and be still capable of having
imparted to it, God-like qualities.

The strength of the Vaudois position, as