in Turin, and one of the lords of the valley of Luserne. He was
commissioned to investigate the history of the "men of the valleys," and
published the result of his labours in the year 1632. He says "that the
Waldenses were no new sect, but had been in those valleys for more than
five or six centuries," and in proof of this remarks further, that "no
edict of any prince who gave permission for the introduction of this
religion into these parts can be found. Princes only give permission to
their subjects to continue in the religion of their ancestors." Cassini, an
Italian priest, declares that the tradition handed down was, that "the
Waldenses were as ancient as the Christian Church."

Another writer, Henri de Corvie, describes them as men descended from "an
ancient race, inhabiting the Alps, and have been always attached to ancient
customs." Voltaire, an impartial witness, speaks of the Waldenses as "the
remains of the first Christians of Gaul." If it be asked for documentary
proof, in the possession of the Waldensians themselves, it should be
remembered that Leger, the historian, collected together all that he could
find, and that these were taken from him when he was imprisoned in Turin,
A.D. 1655. Still, documents of great value and antiquity have been
preserved, and among these must be enumerated "The Noble Lesson," a
didactic poem of about five hundred lines. Three MSS. of this poem are
preserved in the libraries of the Universities of Cambridge, Geneva, and
Dublin, and the date assigned is _early_ in the twelfth century. The
dialect in which it is written is also considered by some as an
unquestionable proof of the high antiquity of the document. For example,
the eminent philologist, M. Renouard, writing as a philologist, and not as
an historian, remarks that "_the dialect of the Vaudois is an idiom
intermediate between the decomposition of the language of the Romans and
the establishment of a new grammatical system_." This philological
circumstance shows the extreme earliness of the period at which the
Waldenses must have betaken themselves to the Cottian Alps, inasmuch as it
proves that they left the Italian plains before the establishment of the
new grammatical system referred to by M. Renouard. This is the opinion of
Mr. Faber, who contends that "the primevally Latin Vaudois must have
retired from the lowlands of Italy to the valleys of Piedmont in the very
days of primitive Christianity, and _before_ the break