espective
colours. He also gave an audience to the Vaudois Table, left money to be
distributed among the poor, in which the Protestants shared; and to
perpetuate the memory of this visit of September 24th, 1844, caused a
fountain to be erected close by with the inscription, "Il re Carolo
Alberto, al popolo che l'accoglieva con tanto affetto." "The king Charles
Albert to the people who welcomed him with so much affection."

This pleasing episode in the history of the Vaudois forms a fitting prelude
to the advent of a yet more substantial token of good-will on the part of
their sovereign. I mean that edict of emancipation which, while it did
justice to the people of the valleys, also, by the circumstances of their
inclusion, made the kingdom of Sardinia a true pattern of constitutional
monarchy; kept her true amidst the perfidy and violence by which the
sovereigns of other states withdrew on the morrow the boon of the
yesterday, and in consequence reaped a harvest of anarchy and disorder;
while brave Piedmont has not only remained firm as a rock, but has been
gathering to itself, one by one, the minute subdivisions of the Italian
peninsula, until at length we see its true and faithful sovereign, "il Re
galantuomo," the monarch of all that stretches from the Tyrol on the north
to Sicily on the south. "His sceptre rules and banner waves" from the shore
of the Adriatic to the valleys of the Alps. And throughout the length and
breadth of that land, whilst neighbouring countries, notably those most
servile to the papacy, Spain and France, have been convulsed by terrors and
paralysed by intestine and foreign wars, the tricoloured flag of the
Italian kingdom floats triumphantly above the walls of ancient Rome, and
such an era of peaceful contentment and commercial enterprise has begun as
its proud cities and luxuriant plains have long been strangers to. Just as
with regard to God's Israel of the East, so does it seem to have been with
this modern Israel of the West. The nations who persecuted and despoiled
the sons of Abraham have been despoiled themselves. The nations who
befriended the Jews have risen to power and influence. Likewise the
persecutors of God's faithful ones in the valleys of the Po, notably the
priest-king and France, have been scourged; whilst the countries which
befriended them in their long series of trials, the Protestant states of
Germany, Holland, and our own land, have been distinguished by a constantly
au