or our next chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[F] _Gli Evangelici Valdesi_, per PAOLO GEYMONAT, Professore di Teologia in
Firenze.

[G] This banner was afterwards presented to the king, and most graciously
received by him.

[H] _Le General Beckwith, sa vie a ses travaux._ By J. P. MEILLE, Pasteur.

CHAPTER XIII.

We concluded our last amidst the gladness of heart which filled the souls
of myriads to whom social progress, political freedom, and evangelical
truth were precious. Our object now is to recount the fruits of that
enlargement accorded to the Vaudois; and in order to do this we must take a
retrospect of their religious condition for some few years before the
arrival of that grand epoch. At that period the state of things in the
valleys was far from satisfactory. Not to recount, as among the causes,
those political disabilities to which reference has been previously made, I
will refer to some additional circumstances of a vexatious and depressing
character. One was the hindrances to the obtaining the most indispensable
religious books, such as Bibles, catechisms, hymn-books. With each parcel
of Bibles and New Testaments, the moderator was obliged to sign a formal
undertaking that not a single copy should be sold, nor even lent to a Roman
Catholic. Again, in all the communes of the valleys, where nearly all the
proprietors were Protestants, and scarcely a Roman Catholic could be found
who was not either living on alms or employed as a daily labourer, the law
required that the _majority_ of the members of the communal council should
be always and necessarily composed of Romanists.

As regards primary education, the valleys were more favourably
circumstanced than other parts of the kingdom. Out of a population of some
twenty thousand, nearly four thousand attended school, at least during the
winter months. However, it will be seen that the real work of education was
not in so satisfactory a condition as the above statement, in a superficial
point of view, might imply. To show this we will descend to details as to
the schools, their kind, structure, fittings, and teachers.

First, then, we take the HAMLET SCHOOLS, about one hundred and twenty in
number. They were carried on generally in a _stable_, and the place was
neither remarkable for space nor cleanliness; so that on one side, in a
narrow division, would be thirty or forty children, separated from the
sheep or the goats by so slender