chief
interest for the traveller through these Dauphiny valleys, so much as
the human endurance, suffering, and faithfulness of the people who
have lived in them in past times, and of which so many interesting
remnants still survive. For Dauphiny forms a principal part of the
country of the ancient Vaudois or Waldenses--literally, the people
inhabiting the _Vaux_, or valleys--who for nearly seven hundred years
bore the heavy brunt of Papal persecution, and are now, after all
their sufferings, free to worship God according to the dictates of
their conscience.

The country of the Vaudois is not confined, as is generally supposed,
to the valleys of Piedmont, but extends over the greater part of
Dauphiny and Provence. From the main ridge of the Cottian Alps, which,
divide France from Italy, great mountain spurs are thrown out, which
run westward as well as eastward, and enclose narrow strips of
pasturage, cultivable land, and green shelves on the mountain sides,
where a poor, virtuous, and hard-working race have long contrived to
earn a scanty subsistence, amidst trials and difficulties of no
ordinary kind,--the greatest of which, strange to say, have arisen
from the pure and simple character of the religion they professed.

The tradition which exists among them is, that the early Christian
missionaries, when travelling from Italy into Gaul by the Roman road
passing over Mont Genevre, taught the Gospel in its primitive form to
the people of the adjoining districts. It is even surmised that St.
Paul journeyed from Rome into Spain by that route, and may himself
have imparted to the people of the valleys their first Christian
instruction. The Italian and Gallic provinces in that quarter were
certainly Christianized in the second century at the latest, and it is
known that the early missionaries were in the habit of making frequent
journeys from the provinces to Rome. Wherefore it is reasonable to
suppose that the people of the valleys would receive occasional visits
from the wayfaring teachers who travelled by the mountain passes in
the immediate neighbourhood of their dwellings.

As years rolled on, and the Church at Rome became rich and allied
itself with the secular power, it gradually departed more and more
from its primitive condition,[92] until at length it was scarcely to
be recognised from the Paganism which it had superseded. The heathen
gods were replaced by canonised mortals; Venus and Cupid by the Virgin
and C