First Entrance into Italy—Never can be Repeated—The Cathedral of Turin—The Royal Palace—The Museum—Egyptian Mummies—Reflections—Landmark of the Vaudois Valleys—Piedmontese House of Commons—Piedmontese Constitution—Perils that surrounded it—Providentially shielded from these—Numbers and Wealth of the Priesthood—Want of Public Opinion—Rise of a Free Press—Its Power—TheGazetta del Popolo—The Bible quoted by the Journalists—The flourishing State of the Country—The Waldensian Temple and Congregation—Workmen's Clubs—The Capuchin Monastery—A Capuchin Friar—Sunset.
First Entrance into Italy—Never can be Repeated—The Cathedral of Turin—The Royal Palace—The Museum—Egyptian Mummies—Reflections—Landmark of the Vaudois Valleys—Piedmontese House of Commons—Piedmontese Constitution—Perils that surrounded it—Providentially shielded from these—Numbers and Wealth of the Priesthood—Want of Public Opinion—Rise of a Free Press—Its Power—TheGazetta del Popolo—The Bible quoted by the Journalists—The flourishing State of the Country—The Waldensian Temple and Congregation—Workmen's Clubs—The Capuchin Monastery—A Capuchin Friar—Sunset.
Onecan enter Italy for the first time only once. For, however often we may climb the Alps, and tread the land that lies stretched out at their base, it is with a cold pulse, compared with the fever of excitement into which we are thrown by the first touch of that soil. The charm is flown; the tree of knowledge has been plucked; and never more can we taste the dreamy yet intense delight which attended the first unfolding of the gates of the Alps, and the first rising of the fair vision of Italy.
In truth, the Italy which one comes to see on his second visit is not the Italy that first drew him across the Alps. That was the Italy of history, or rather of his own imagination.The fair form his fancy was wont to conjure up, draped in the glowing recollections of empire and of arms, and encompassed with the halo of heroic deeds, he can see no more. There meets him, on the other side of the Alps, a vision very unlike this. The Italy of the Cæsars is gone; and where she sat is now a poor, naked, cowering thing, with a chain upon her arm,—the Italy of the Popes. But the fascination attends the traveller some short way into that land. Indeed, he is loath to lose it, and would rather see Italy through the warm colourings of history, and the bright hues of his own fancy, than look upon her as she is.
I shall never forget the intense excitement that thrilled me when I found myself rolling along on the magnificent avenue of pollard-elms, that runs all the way from Rivoli to Turin. The voluptuous air, which seemed to fill the landscape with a dreamy gaiety; the intense sunlight, which tinted every object with extraordinary brilliancy, from the bright leaves overhead, to the burning domes of Turin in front; the dark eyes of the natives, which flashed with a fervour like that of their own sun; the Alps towering above me, and running off in a vast unbroken line of glittering masses,—all contributed to form a picture of so novel and brilliant a kind, that it absolutely produced an intoxication of delight.
I passed a few days at Turin; and the pleasure of my stay was much enhanced by the society of my friend the Rev. John Bonar, whom I had met at Chamberry,en route, with his family, for Malta. We visited together the chief objects of interest in the capital of Piedmont. The churches we saw of course. And though we had been carried blindfolded across the Alps, and set down in the cathedral of Turin, the statuary alone would have told us that we were in Italy. The most unpractised eye could see at once the difference betwixtthese statues and those of the Transalpine churches. The Italian sculptors seemed to possess some secret by which they could make the marble live. Some half-dozen of priests, with red copes (I presume it was a martyr's day, for on such days the Church's dress is red), ranged in a pew near the altar, were singing psalms. Whether the good men were thinking of their dinner, I knew not; but they yawned portentously, wrung their hands with an air of helplessness, and looked at us as if they half expected that we would volunteer to do duty for an hour or so in their stead. A bishop chanting his psalter under the groined roof of cathedral, and a covenanter praying in his hill-side cave, would form an admirable picture of two very different styles of devotion. There were some dozen of old women on the floor, whom the mixed motive of saying their prayers and picking up a chance alms seemed to have drawn thither. From the Duomo we went to the King's palace. We walked through a suit of splendid apartments, though not quite accordant in their style of ornament and comfort with our English ideas. The floor and roof were of rich and beautiful mosaics; the walls were adorned with the more memorable battles of the Sardinian nation; and the furniture was minutely and elaborately inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Three rooms more particularly attracted my attention. The first contained the throne of the kings of Savoy,—a gilded chair, under a crimson canopy, and surrounded by a gilt railing. I thought, as I gazed upon it, how often the power of that throne had lain heavily upon the poor Waldenses. The other room contained the bed on which King Charles Albert died. It is yet in my readers' recollection, that Charles Albert died at Oporto; but the whole furniture of the room in which he breathed his last was transported, together with his ashes, to Turin. It was an affecting sight. There it stood,huddled into a corner,—a poor bed of boards, with a plain coverlet, such as a Spanish peasant might sleep beneath; a chest of deal drawers; and a few of the necessary utensils of a sick chamber. The third room contained the Queen's bed of state. Its windows opened sweetly upon the fine gardens of the palace, where the first ray, as it slants downwards from the crest of the Alps into the valley of the Po, falls on the massy foliage of the mulberry and the orange. On the table were some six or eight books, among which was a copy of the Psalms of David. "It is very fine," said my friend Mr Bonar, glancing up at the gilded canopy and silken hangings of the bed, and poking his hand at the same time into its soft woolly furnishings, "but nothing but blankets can make it comfortable."
From the palace we passed to the Museum. There you see pictures, statues, coins stamped with the effigies of kings that lived thousands of years ago, and papyrus parchments inscribed with the hieroglyphics of old Egypt, and other curiosities, which it has required ages to collect, as it would volumes to describe. Not the least interesting sight there is the gods of Egypt,—cats, ibises, fish, monkeys, heads of calves and bulls, all lying in their original swathings. I looked narrowly at these divinities, but could detect no difference betwixt the god-cat of Egypt and the cats of our day. Were it possible to re-animate one of them, and make it free of our streets, I fear the god would be mistaken for an ordinary quadruped of its own kind, pelted and worried by mischievous boys and dogs, as other cats are. I do not know that a modern priest of Turin has any very good ground for taunting an old Egyptian priest with his cat-worship. If it is impossible to tell the difference betwixt a cat which is simply a cat, and a cat which is a god, it is just as impossible to tell the difference betwixt abread-wafer which is simply bread, and a bread-wafer which is the flesh and blood, the soul and divinity, of Christ.
Seeing in Egypt the gods died, it will not surprise the reader that in Egypt men should die. And there they lay, the brown sons and daughters of Mizraim, side by side with their gods, wrapt with them in the same stoney, dreamless slumber. One mummy struck me much. It lay in a stone sarcophagus, the same in which the hands of wife or child mayhap had placed it; and there it had slept on undisturbed through all the changes and hubbub of four thousand years. Over the face was drawn a thin cloth, through which the features could be seen not indistinctly. Now, thought I, I shall hear all about old Egypt. Perhaps this man has seen Joseph, or talked with Jacob, or witnessed the wonders of the exodus. Come, tell me your name or profession, or some of the strange events of your history. Did you don the mail-coat of the warrior, or the white robe of the priest? Did you till the ground, and live on garlic; or were you owner of a princely estate, and wont to sit on your house-top of evenings, enjoying the delicious twilight, and the soft flow of the Nile? Come now, tell me all. The door of a departed world seemed about to open. I felt as if standing on its threshold, and looking in upon the shadowy forms that peopled it. But ah! these lips spoke not. With the Rosetta stone as the key, I could compel the granite slabs and the brown worn parchments around me to give up their secrets. But where was the key that could open that breast, and read the secrets locked up in it?
And this form had still a living owner! This awoke a train of thought yet more solemn. Who, what, and where is he? Anxious as I had been to have the door of that mysterious past in which he had lived opened to me, I was yet more anxious to look into that more mysterious and awful futureinto which he had gone. What had he seen and felt these four thousand years? Did the ages seem long to him, or was it but as a few days since he left the earth? I went close up to the dark curtain, but there was no opening,—no chink by which I could see into the world beyond. Will no kind hand draw the veil aside but for a moment? There it has hung unlifted age after age, concealing, with its impenetrable folds, all that mortals would most like to know. Myriads and myriads have passed within, but not one has ever given back voice, or look, or sign, to those they left behind, and from whom never before did they conceal thought or wish. Why is this? Do they not still think of us? Do they not still love us? Would they softly speak to us if they could? What gulf divides them? Ah! how silent are the dead!
Close by the great highway into Italy lie the "Valleys of the Vaudois." One might pass them without being aware of their near presence, or that he was treading upon holy ground;—so near to the world are they, and yet so completely hidden from it. Ascend the little hill on the south of Turin, and follow with your eye the great wall of the Alps which bounds the plain on the north. There, in the west, about thirty miles from where you stand, is a tall pyramidal-shaped mountain, towering high above the other summits. That is Monte Viso, which rises like a heaven-erected beacon, to signify from afar to the traveller the land of the Waldenses, and to call him, with its solemn voice, to turn aside and see the spot where "the bush burned and was not consumed." We shall make a short, a very short visit to these valleys, than which Europe has no more sacred soil. But first let us speak of some of the bulwarks which an all-wise Providence has erected in our day around a Church and people whose existence is one of the great living miracles of the world.
The revolutions which swept over Italy in 1848 were the knell of the other Italian States, but to Piedmont they were the trumpet of liberty. No man living can satisfactorily explain why the same event should have operated so disasterously for the one, and so beneficially for the other. No reason can be found in the condition of the country itself: the thing is inexplicable on ordinary principles; and the more intelligent Piedmontese at this day speak of it as a miracle. But so is the fact. Piedmont is a constitutional kingdom; and I went with M. Malan, himself a Waldensian, and a member of the Chamber of Deputies, to see the hall where their Parliament sits. A spacious flight of steps conducts to a noble hall, in form an ellipse, and surmounted by a dome. At one end of the ellipse hangs a portrait of the President, and underneath is his richly gilt chair, with a crimson-covered table before it. Right in front of the Speaker's chair, on a lower level, is placed the tribune, which much resembles the precentor's desk in a Scottish church. The tribune is occupied only when a Minister makes a Ministerial declaration, or a Convener of a Committee gives in his Report. An open space divides the tribune from the seats of the members. These last run all round the hall, in concentric rows of benches, also covered with crimson. "There, on the right," said M. Malan, "sit the priest party. In the front are the Ministerial members; on the left is my seat. There is an extreme left to which I do not belong: I have not passed the constitutional line. This lower tier of galleries is for the conductors of the press and the diplomatic corps; this higher gallery is for ladies and military men. We are 204 members in all. We have a member for every twenty-five thousand inhabitants. Our population is four millions and a half. Our House of Peers containsonly ninety members. The King has the privilege of nominating to it, but peers so created are only for life."
It was, in truth, a marvellous sight;—a free and independent Parliament meeting in the ancient capital of the bigoted Piedmont, with a free press and a public looking on, and one of the long proscribed Vaudois race occupying a seat in it. The more I thought of it, the more I wondered. The causes which had led to so extraordinary a result seemed clearly providential. When King Charles Albert in 1848 gave his subjects a Constitution, no one had asked it, and few there were who could value it, or even knew what a Constitution meant. One or two public writers there were who said that public opinion demanded it; but, in sooth, there was then no public opinion in the country. Soon after this the campaign in Lombardy was commenced, and the result of that campaign threatened the Piedmontese Constitution with extinction. The Piedmontese army was beaten by the Austrians, and had to make a hasty and inglorious retreat into their own country. Every one then expected that Radetzky would march upon Turin, put down the Constitution, and seize upon Sardinia. Contrary to his usual habits, the old warrior halted on the frontier, as if kept back by an invisible power, and the Constitution was saved. Then came the death of Charles Albert, of a broken heart, in Oporto, whither he had fled; and every one believed that the Piedmontese charter would accompany its author to the tomb. The dispositions and policy of the new king were unknown; but the probability was that he would follow the example of his brother sovereigns of Italy, all of whom had begun to revoke the Constitutions which they had so recently inaugurated with solemn oaths. Happily these fears were not realized. The new perils passed over, and left the Constitutionunscathed. King Victor Immanuel,—a constitutional monarch simply by accident,—turned out a good-natured, easy-minded man, who loved the chase and his country seat, and found it more agreeable to live on good terms with his subjects, and enjoy a handsome civil list,—which his Parliament has taken care to vote him,—than to be indebted for his safety and a bankrupt exchequer to the bayonets of his guards. Thus marvellously, hitherto, in the midst of dangers at home and re-action abroad, has the Piedmontese charter been preserved. I dwell with the greater minuteness on this point, because on the integrity of that charter are suspended the civil liberties of the Church of the Vaudois. When I was in Turin the Constitution was three years old; but even then its existence was exceedingly precarious. The King could have revoked it at any moment; and there was not then, I was assured by General Beckwith,—who knows the state of the Piedmontese nation well,—moral power in the country to offer any effectual resistance, had the royal will decreed the suppression of constitutional government. "But," added he, "should the Constitution live three years longer, the people by that time will have become so habituated to the working of a free Constitution, and public opinion will have acquired such strength, that it will be impossible for the monarch to retrace his steps, even should he be so inclined." It is exactly three years since that time, and the state of the Piedmontese nation at this moment is such as to justify the words of the sagacious old man.
The first grand difficulty in the way of the Constitution was, the numbers and power of the priesthood. In no country in Europe,—not even in France and Austria, when their size is compared,—were the benefices so numerous, or their holders so luxuriously fed. Piedmont was the paradise of priests. The ecclesiastical statistics of that kingdom, furnished to theFrench journalLa Presse, on occasion of the introduction of the bill for suppressing the convents, on the 8th of January 1855, reveals a state of things truly astonishing. Notwithstanding that the population is only four and a half millions, there are in Sardinia 7 archbishops; 34 bishops; 41 chapters, with 860 canons attached to the bishoprics; 73 simple chapters, with 470 canons; 1100 livings for the canons; and, lastly, 4267 parishes, with some thousands of parish priests. The domain of the Church represents a capital of 400 millions of francs, with a yearly revenue of 17 millions and upwards. This enormous wealth is divided amongst the clergy in proportions grossly unequal. The 41 prelates of Sardinia enjoy a revenue of nearly a million and a half of francs, which is double what used to maintain all the bishops of the French empire. The Archbishop of Turin has an income of 120,000 francs, which is more than the whole bench of Belgian bishops. The other prelates are paid in proportion. As a set-off to this wealth, there are in Sardinia upwards of 2000 curates, not one of whom has so much as 800 francs, or about L.35 sterling. These are thus tempted to prey upon the people. Such is the terrible organization which the King and Parliament have to encounter in carrying out their reforms, and such is the fearful incubus which has pressed for ages upon the social rights and industrial energies of the Piedmontese people.
But this is but a part of the great sacerdotal army encamped in Piedmont. There are 71 religious orders besides, divided into 604 houses, containing in all 8563 monks and nuns. The expense of feeding these six hundred houses, with their army of eight thousand strong, forms an item of two millions and a-half of francs, and represents a capital of forty-five millions. The greatest admirer of these fraternities will scarce deny that this is a handsome remuneration for theirservices; indeed, we never could make out what these services really are. They do not teach the youth, or pray with the aged. For reading they have no taste; and to write what will be read, or preach what will be listened to, is far beyond their ability. Their pious hands disdain all contact with the plough, and the loom, and the spade. They share with their countrymen neither the labours of peace, nor the dangers of war. They lounge all day in the streets, or about the wine shops; and, when the dinner-hour arrives, they troop home-wards, to retail the gossip of the town over a groaning board and a well-filled flagon. Thus they fatten like pigs, being about as cleanly, but scarce as useful. It is not surprising that a bill should at last have reached the Chambers, proposing,first, the better distribution of the revenues of the Church, equal to a fourth of the kingdom; and,second, the suppression of those "houses," the rules of which bind over their members to sheer, downright idleness, leaving only those who have some show of public duty to perform. The priests denounce the bill as "spoliation and robbery" of course, and prophesy all manner of things against so wicked a kingdom. Doubtless it is daring impiety in the eyes of Rome to forbid a man with a shaven crown and a brown cloak to play the idler and vagabond. We are only surprised that the people of Piedmont have so long suffered their labours to be eaten up by an order of men useless, and worse than useless.
Another grand difficulty in Piedmont was the absence of a middle class,—wealthy, intelligent, and independent. No one felt that he had rights, and you never heard people saying there, as you may do in Britain, "this is my right, and I will have it." A feeling of individual right, and of responsibility,—for the two go together,—was then just beginning to dawn upon the popular mind. This was accompaniedby a certain amount of disorganizing influence; not that of Socialism,—which, happily, scarce existed in Piedmont,—but that of self-action. Every one was feeling his own way. The priests, of course, were exceedingly wroth, and loudly accused Protestantism as the cause of all this commotion in men's minds. Alas! there was no Protestantism in Piedmont, for it had been one of the most bigoted kingdoms in Italy. It was their own handiwork; for a tyranny always produces a democracy. As if by a miracle, a powerful and popular press started up in Turin. The writers in theOpinioneand theGazetta del Popolo, acting, I suspect, on a hint given by some Vaudois that there was an old book, now little known, that would help them in the war they were now waging, went to the Bible, and, finding that it made against the priests, were liberal in their quotations from it. Their most telling hits were the extracts from Scripture; and finding it so, they quoted yet more largely. The priests were much concerned to see Holy Scripture so far profaned as to be quoted in newspapers, and exposed freely to the gaze of the vulgar. But what could they do? Their own literary qualifications did not warrant them to enter the lists with these writers: they had forgot the way to preach, unless at Lent; they could work the confessional, but even it began to be silenced by the powerful artillery of the press. At an earlier stage they might have roused the peasantry, and marched upon the Constitution, whose life they knew was the death of their power; but it was too late in 1851. An attempt of this sort made a year or two after, among the peasantry of the Val d'Aosta, turned out a miserable failure. Thus, a movement which in other countries came forward under the sanction of the priesthood, from the very outset in Piedmont took a contrary direction, and set in full against the Church. Since that day libertyhas been working itself, bit by bit, into the action of the Constitution, and the feelings of the people; and now, I believe, neither King nor Parliament, were they so inclined, could put it down.
The sum of the matter then is, that of all the kingdoms which the era of 1848 started in the path of free government, the brave little State of Piedmont alone has persevered to this day. Amid the wide weltering sea of Italian anarchy and despotism, here, and here alone, liberty finds a spot on which to plant her foot. Again we ask, why is this? There is nothing in the past history of the country,—nothing in the present state of the nation,—which can account for it. We must look elsewhere for a solution; and we do not hesitate to avow our firm conviction, that a special Providence has shielded the Constitution of Piedmont, because with that Constitution is bound up the liberties of the ancient martyr Church of the Vaudois. It was the only one of the Italian Constitutions that carried in it so sacred a guarantee of permanency. On the 17th of February 1848 (the day is worth remembering), Charles Albert, by a royal edict, admitted the Waldenses to the enjoyment of all civil and political rights, in common with the rest of their fellow-subjects. Now, for the first time in a thousand years, the trumpet of liberty sounded amid the Vaudois valleys; and the shout of joy which the Alps sent back seemed like the first response to the prayer which had so often ascended from these hills, "How long, O Lord." Would not Sodom have been spared had ten righteous men been found in it? and why not Piedmont, seeing the Waldensian Church was there? Yes, Piedmont is the little Zoar of the Italian plains! Little may its people reck to whom it is they owe their escape. It is nevertheless a truth that, but for the poor Vaudois, whom, instigated by the Pope, they long and ruthlessly laboured to exterminate,their country would have been at this day in the same gulph of social demoralization and political re-action with Tuscany, and Naples, and Rome. These last were taken, and Piedmont escaped.
And the country is truly flourishing. It has thriven every day since Charles Albert emancipated the Vaudois. No one can cross its frontier without being struck with the contrast it presents to the other Italian States. While they are decaying like a corpse, it is flourishing like the chestnut-tree of its own mountains. The very faces of the people may tell you that the country is free and prosperous. Its citizens walk about with the cheerful, active air of men who have something to do and to enjoy, and not with the listless, desponding, heart-sick look which marks the inhabitants of the other States of Italy. Here, too, you miss that universal beggary and vagabondism that disfigure and pollute all the other countries of the Peninsula. What rich loam the ploughman turns up! What magnificent vines shade its plains! Public works are in progress, railways have been formed, and new houses are building. Not fewer than a hundred houses were built in Turin last year, which is more, I verily believe, than in all the other Italian towns out of Piedmont taken together. Thus, while the other States of Italy are foundering in the tempest, Piedmont lives because it carries the Vaudois and their fortunes.
From the hall of the Chamber of Deputies I went with M. Malan to the office of theGazetta del Popolo, to be introduced to its editors. TheGazetta del Popolois a daily paper, with a circulation of 15,000; and, being sold at a penny, is universally read by the middle and lower classes. It is theTimesof Piedmont. Its editors are men of great talent, and write with the practical good sense and racy style of Cobbett. They are not religious men, neither are they Romanists, though nominallyconnected with the Church of the State; but they are warm advocates of constitutional government, hearty haters of the Papacy, and have done much to enlighten the public mind, and loosen it from Romanism. They first of all made inquiries respecting the external resemblance of Puseyistic and Popish worship, as I had seen the latter in Italy. They made yet more eager inquiries respecting the progress and prospects of Puseyism in England, and about a then recent declaration of the Archbishop of Canterbury, to the effect that there were only two Bishops in the Church of England that had gone over to Puseyism. They seemed to feel that the fortunes of the Papacy would turn mainly upon the fortunes of Puseyism in England. As regarded the Archbishop, I replied, that I believed in the substantial accuracy of his statement, that there were not more than two members of the episcopate who could be held to be decided Puseyites; and as regarded the progress of Puseyism, I said, that it had been making great and rapid progress, but that the papal aggression, in my humble opinion, had dealt a somewhat heavy blow to both Popery and Puseyism,—that so long as Romanism came begging for toleration, it had found great favour in the eyes of the liberals; but when it came claiming to govern, it had scared away many of its former supporters, who had come to know it better,—and that the Protestant feeling which the aggression had evoked on the part of the Court, the Parliament, and the people, had tended to discourage Romanism, and all kindred or identical creeds. They were delighted to hear this, and said that they would baptize the fact in theGazetta del Popolo, "the assassination of the Papacy by Cardinal Wiseman." Their paper, M. Malan afterwards told me, is published on Sabbaths as well (there are worse things done on that day in Italy, even by bishops), on which day they print their weeklysermon. "You won't preach," say they to the priests; "therefore we will;" and it is in their Sabbath sheet that they make their bitterest assaults upon the priesthood. They quote largely from Scripture: not that they wish to establish evangelical truth, of which they know little, but because they find such quotations to be the most powerful weapons which they can employ against the Papacy. In truth, they advertised in this way the Bible to their countrymen, many of whom had never heard of such a book till then.
I was inexpressibly delighted to find such men in Turin wielding such influence, and took the liberty of saying at parting, that we in England had beheld with admiration the noble stand Piedmont had made in behalf of constitutional government,—that we were watching with intense interest the future career of their nation,—that we were cherishing the hope that they would manfully maintain the ground they had taken up,—and that in England, and especially in Scotland, we felt that the root of all the despotism of the Continent was the Papacy,—that the way to strike for liberty was to strike at Rome,—and that till the Papacy was overthrown, never would the nations of the world be either free or happy. They assured me that in these sentiments they heartily concurred, and that they were the very ideas they were endeavouring to propagate. They gave me, on taking leave, a copy of that morning's paper as asouvenir; and on examining it afterwards, I found that the topic of its leading article was quite in the vein of our conversation. The great bulk of the liberal party in Piedmont shared even then the ideas of the editors of theGazetta del Popolo, and felt that to lay the foundations of constitutional liberty, they needs must raze those of Rome. This is a truth; and not only so,—it is the primal truth in the science of European liberty. This truth only now begins tobe understood on the Continent. It is the main lesson which the re-action of 1849 has been overruled to teach. All former insurrections have been against kings and aristocrats: even in 1848 the Italians were willing to accept the leadership of the Pope. The perfidies and atrocities of which they have since been the victims have burned the essential tyranny of the papal system into their minds; and the next insurrection that takes place will be against the Papacy.
A constitution, a free press, and a public opinion, are but the outward defences of a divine and immortal principle, which, rooted in the soil of Piedmont, has outlived a long winter, and is now beginning to bud afresh, and to send forth goodlier shoots than ever. To this I next turned. Conducted by M. Malan, I went to the western quarter of Turin, where, amid the gardens and elegant mansions of the suburbs, workmen were digging the foundations of what was to be a spacious building. On this spot the Dominicans in former ages had burned the bodies of the martyrs; and now the Waldensian temple stands here,—a striking proof, surely, of the immortality of truth,—to rise, and live, and speak boldly, on the very spot where she had been bound to a stake, burned, and extinguished, as the persecutor believed. This church, not the least elegant in a city abounding with elegant structures, has since been opened, and is filled every Sabbath with well-nigh a thousand auditors,—the largest congregation, I will venture to say, in Turin.
In 1851 I could visit the cradle of this movement. It had its first rise in the labours of Felix Neff, twenty-five years before; but it was not till the revolution of 1848 that it appeared above ground. Even in 1851, colportage among the Piedmontese was prohibited, though it was allowable to print or import the Bible for the use of the Waldenses, and theGovernment winked at its sale to their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects. I was shown in M. Malan's banking office the Bible depot, and was gratified to find that the sales which were made to applicants only had during the past year amounted to a thousand copies. Evening meetings were held every day of the week, in various parts of Turin, at which the Bible was read, and points of controversy betwixt Christianity and Romanism eagerly discussed. The Rev. M. Meille, the able editor of theBuona Novella,—a paper then just starting,—informed me that not fewer than ninety persons had been present at the meeting superintended by him the night before. These week-day assemblages, as well as the Sabbath audiences, were of a very miscellaneous character,—Vaudois, who had come to Turin to be servants, for, prior to the revolution, they could be nothing else; Piedmontese tradesmen; Swiss, Germans, and Italian refugees, to whom three pastors ministered,—one in French, one in German, and a third in the Italian tongue. There were then not fewer than ten re-unions every week in Turin. The idea, too, had been started of taking advantage of the workmen's clubs for the propagation of the gospel. A network of such societies covered northern and central Italy. The clubs in Turin corresponded with those in Genoa, Alessandria, and all the principal towns of Piedmont; and these again with similar clubs in central Italy; and any new theory or doctrine introduced into one soon made the round of all. The plan adopted was to send evangelical workmen into these clubs, who were listened to as they propounded the new plan of justification by faith. The clubs in Turin were first leavened with the gospel; thence it was extended to Genoa, and gradually also to central Italy. While theprolétairesin France were discussing the claims of labour, the workmen in Piedmont were canvassing the doctrinesof the New Testament; and hence the difference betwixt the two countries.
It was now drawing towards sunset, and I purposed enjoying the twilight,—delicious in all climates, but especially in Italy,—on the terrace of the College or Monastery of the Capuchins. This monastery stands on the Collina, a romantic height on the south of Turin, washed by the Po, with villas and temples on its crest and summits. I took my way through the noble street that leads southwards, halting at the book-stalls, and picking out of their heaps of rubbish an Italian copy of the Catechism of Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux. The Collina was all in a blaze; the windows of the Palazzo Regina glittered in the setting beams; and the dome of the Superga shone like gold. Crossing the Po, I ascended by the winding avenue of shady acacias, which are planted there to protect the cowled heads of the fathers from the noonday sun. One of the monks was winding his way up hill, at a pace which gave me full opportunity of observing him. A little black cap covered his scalp; his round bullet-head, which bristled with short, thick-set hairs, joined on, by a neck of considerably more than the average girth, to shoulders of Atlantean dimensions. His body was enveloped in a coarse brown mantle, which descended to his calves, and was gathered round his middle with a slender white cord. His naked feet were thrust into sandals. The features of the "religious" were coarse and swollen; and he strode up hill before me with a gait which would have made a peaceful man, had he met him on a roadside in Scotland, give him a wide offing. Parties of soldiers wounded in the late campaign were sauntering in the square of the monastery, or looking over the low wall at the city beneath. Their pale and sickly looks formed a striking contrast to the athletic forms of the full-fed monks. Itwas inexplicable to me, that the youth of Sardinia, immature and raw, should be drafted into the army, while such an amount of thews and sinews as this monastery, and hundreds more, contained, should be allowed to run to waste, or worse. If but for their health, the monks should be compelled to fight the next campaign.
The sun went down. Long horizontal shafts of golden light shot through amidst the Alps; their snows glittered with a dazzling whiteness: whiteness is a weak term;—it was a brilliant and lustrous glory, like that of light itself. Anon a crimson blush ran along the chain. It faded; it came again. A wall of burning peaks, from two to three hundred miles in length, rose along the horizon. Eve, with her purple shadows, drew on; and I left the mountains under a sky of vermilion, with Monte Viso covering with its shadow the honoured dust that sleeps around it, and pointing with its stony finger to that sky whither the spirits of the martyred Vaudois have now ascended. It seemed to say, "Come and see."
Journey to "Valleys"—Dinner at Pignerolo—Grandeur of Scenery—Associations—Bicherasio—Procession ofSantissimo—Connection betwixt the History and the Country of the Vaudois—The Three Valleys of Martino, Angrona, and Lucerna—Their Arrangement—Strength—Fertility—La Tour—The Castelluzzo—Scenery of the Val Lucerna—The Manna of the Waldenses—Populousness of the Valleys—Variety of Productions—The Roman Flood and the Vaudois Ark.
Journey to "Valleys"—Dinner at Pignerolo—Grandeur of Scenery—Associations—Bicherasio—Procession ofSantissimo—Connection betwixt the History and the Country of the Vaudois—The Three Valleys of Martino, Angrona, and Lucerna—Their Arrangement—Strength—Fertility—La Tour—The Castelluzzo—Scenery of the Val Lucerna—The Manna of the Waldenses—Populousness of the Valleys—Variety of Productions—The Roman Flood and the Vaudois Ark.
TheValleys of the Vaudois lie about thirty miles to the south-west of Turin. The road thither it is scarce possible to miss. Keeping the lofty and pyramidal summit of Monte Viso in your eye, you go straight on, in a line parallel with the Alps, along the valley of the Po, which is but a prolongation of the great plain of Lombardy. On my way down to these valleys, I observed on the roadside numerous little temples, which the natives, in true Pagan fashion, had erected to their deities. The niches of these temples were filled with Madonnas, crucifixes, and saints, gaunt and grizzly, with unlighted candles stuck before them, or rude paintings and tinsel baubles hung up as votive offerings. The signboards—especially those of the wine venders—were exceedingly religious. They displayed,for the most part, a bizarre painting of the Virgin, and occasionally of the Pope; and not unfrequently underneath these personages were a company of heretics, such as those I was going to visit, sweltering in flames. Were a Protestant vintner to sell his ale beneath a picture of Catholics burning in hell, I fear we should never hear the last of it. But I must say, that these pictures seemed the production of past times. They were one and all sorely faded, as if their owners were beginning to be somewhat ashamed of them, or lacked zeal to repair them. Theconducteurof the stage had an Italian translation of Mr Gladstone's well-known pamphlet on Naples in his hand, which then covered all the book-stalls in Turin, and was read by every one. This led to a lively discussion on the subject of the Church, between him and two fellow-travellers, to whom I had been introduced at starting, as Waldenses. I observed that, although he appeared to come off but second best in the controversy, he bore all with unruffled humour, as if not unwilling to be beaten. At length, after a ride of twenty miles over the plain, in which the husbandman, with plough as old in its form as the Georgics, was turning up a soil rich, black, and glossy as the raven's wing, we arrived at Pignerolo, a town on the borders of the Vaudois land.
The two Vaudois and myself adjourned to the hotel to dine. Even in this we had an instance of changed times. In this very town of Pignerolo a law had been in existence, and was not long repealed, forbidding, under severe penalties, any one to give meat or drink to a Vaudois. The "Valleys" were only ten miles distant, and we agreed to walk thither on foot. Indeed, all such spots must be so visited, if one would feel their full influence. Leaving Pignerolo, the road began to draw into the bosom of the mountains, and the scenery becamegrander at every step. On the right rose the hills of the Vaudois, with knolls glittering with woods and cottages scattered at their feet. On the left, long reaches of the Po, meandering through pasturages and vineyards, gleamed out golden in the western sun. The scenery reminded me much of the Highlands at Comrie, only it was on a scale of richness and magnificence unknown to Scotland.
After advancing a few miles, I chanced to turn and look back. The change the mountains had undergone struck me much. A division of Alps, tall and cloud-capped, appeared to have broken off from the main army, and to have come marching into the plain; and while the mountains were closing in upon us behind, they appeared to be falling back in front, and arranging themselves into the segment of a vast circle. A magnificent amphitheatre had risen noiselessly around us. On all sides save the south, where a reach of the valley was still visible, the eye met only a lofty wall of mountains, hung in a rich and gorgeous tapestry of bright green pasturages and shady pine-forests, with the frequent sunlight gleam of white chalets. The snows of their summits were veiled in masses of cloud, which the southerly winds were bringing up upon them from the Mediterranean. I seemed to have entered some stately temple,—a temple not of mortal workmanship,—which needed no tall shaft, no groined roof, no silver lamps, no chisel or pencil of artist to beautify it, and no white-robed priest to make it holy. It had been built by Him whose power laid the foundations of the earth, and hung the stars in heaven; and it had been consecrated by sacrifices such as Rome's mitred priests never offered in aisled cathedral. Nor had it been the scene only of lofty endurance: it had been the scene also of sweet and holy joys. There the Vaudois patriarchs, like Enoch, had "walked with God;"there they had read his Word, and kept his Sabbaths. They had sung his praise by these silvery brooks, and kneeled in prayer beneath these chestnut trees. There, too, arose the shout of triumphant battle; and from those valleys the Vaudois martyrs had gone up, higher than these white peaks, to take their place in the white-robed and palm-bearing company. Can the spirit, I asked myself, ever forget its earthly struggles, or the scene on which they were endured? and may not the very same picture of beauty and grandeur now before my eye be imprinted eternally on the memory of many of the blessed in Heaven?
There was silence on plain and mountain,—a hush like that of a sanctuary, reverent and deep, and broken only by the flow of the torrent and the sound of voices among the vineyards. I could not fail to observe that sounds here were more musical than on the plain. This is a peculiarity belonging to mountainous regions; but I have nowhere seen it so perceptible as here. Every accent had a fullness and melody of tone, as if spoken in a whispering gallery. Right in the centre of the circle formed by the mountains was the entrance of the Vaudois valleys. The place was due north from where we now were, but we had to make a considerable detour in order to reach it. A long low hill, rough with boulders and feathery with woods, lay across the mouth of these valleys; and we had to go round it on the west, and return along the fertile vale which divides it from the high Alps, whose straths and gorges form the dwellings of the Waldenses.
A dream it seemed to be, walking thus within the shadow of the Vaudois hills. And then, too, what a strange chance was it which had thrown me into the society of my two Waldensian fellow-travellers! They had met me on the threshold of their country, as if sent to bid me welcome, and conduct mysteps into a land which the prayers and sufferings of their forefathers had for ever hallowed. They could not speak a word of my tongue; and to them my transalpine Italian was not more than intelligible. Yet, such is the power of a common sympathy, the conversation did not once flag all the way; and it had reference, of course, to one subject. I told them that I was not unacquainted with their glorious history;—that from a child I had known the noble deeds of their fathers, who had received an equal place in my veneration with the men of old, "who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouth of lions. And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; of whom the world was not worthy;"—and that, next to the hills of my own land, hallowed, too, with martyr-blood, I loved the mountains within whose shadow my wandering steps had now brought me. The eyes of my Vaudois friends kindled; they were not unconscious, I could see, of their noble lineage; and they were visibly touched by the circumstance that a stranger from a distant land—drawn thither by sympathy with the great struggles of their nation—should come to visit their mountains. Every object in any way connected with their history, and especially with their persecutions, was carefully pointed out to me. "There," said they, "is our frontier church, the first of the Vaudois candles," pointing to a white edifice that gleamed out upon us amid woods and rocks, on the summit of a hill, soon after leaving Pignerolo. They mentioned, too, with peculiar emphasis, the year of the last great massacre of their brethren. The memory of that transaction, I feel assured, will perish only withthe Vaudois race. Nor can I forget the evident pride with which, on nearing the valley of Lucerne, they pointed to the giant form of their Castelluzzo, now looming through the shades of night, and told me that in the caves of that mighty rock their fathers found shelter, when the valley beneath was covered with armed men.
Nowhere had I seen more luxuriant vines. They were festooned, too, after the manner of those I had seen among the Alps; but here the effect was more beautiful. They were literally stretched out over entire fields in an unbroken web of boughs. Clothed with luxuriant foliage, they looked like another azure canopy extended over the soil. There was ample room beneath for the ploughman and his bullocks. The golden beams, struggling through the massy foliage, fell in a mellow and finely tinted shower on the newly ploughed soil. Wheat is said to ripen better beneath the vine-shade than in the open sun. The season of grapes was shortly past; but here and there large clusters were still pendent on the bough.
Hitherto, although we had been skirting the Vaudois territory, we had not set foot upon it. The line which separates it from the rest of Piedmont touches the small town of Bicherasio, on the western flank of the low hill I have mentioned; and the roofs of the little town were already in sight. Passing, on the left, a white-walled mass-house on a small height, with the priest looking at us from amid the autumn-tinted vine leaves that shaded the wall, we entered the town of Bicherasio. The first sight we saw was a procession advancing up the street at double-quick time. I was at first sorely puzzled what to make of it. There was an air of mingled fun and gravity on the faces of the crowd; but the former so greatly predominated, that I took the affair for a frolic of the youths of Bicherasio. First came a squad of dirty boys, someof whom carried prayer-books: these were followed by some dozen or so of young women in their working attire, ranged in line, and carrying flambeaux. In the centre of the procession was a tall raw-boned priest, of about twenty-five years of age, with a little box in his hand. His head was bare, and he wore a long brown dress, bound with a cord round his middle. A canopy of crimson cloth, sorely soiled and tarnished, was borne over him by four of the taller lads. He had a flurried and wild look, as if he had slept out in the woods all night, and had had time only to shake himself, and put his fingers through his hair, before being called on to run with his little box. The procession closed, as it had opened, with a cloud of noisy and dirty urchins hanging on the rear of the priest and his flambeaux-bearing company. The whole swept past us at such a rapid pace, that I could only, by way of divining its object, open large wondering eyes upon it, which the large-boned lad in the brown cloak noticed, and repaid with a scowl, which broke no bones, however. "He is carrying thesantissimo," said my fellow-travellers, when the procession had passed, "to a dying man." We passed the line, and set foot on the Vaudois territory. Being now on privileged soil, and safe from any ebullition which the scant reverence we had paid the procession of thesantissimomight have drawn upon us, we entered a small albergo, and partook together of a bottle of wine. Our long walk, and the warmth of the evening, made the refreshment exceedingly agreeable. By way of commending the qualities of their soil, my companions remarked, that "this was the vine of the land." I felt disposed to deal with it as David did with the water of the well of Bethlehem, for here—
"The nurture of the peasant's vinesHath been the martyr's blood!"
It was dark before I reached La Tour; but one of my fellow-travellers—the other having left us at San Giovanni—accompanied me every footstep of the way, having passed his own dwelling two full miles, to do me this kindness.
I must remind the reader, that this is simply a look in upon the Vaudois, on my way to Rome. I purpose here no description in full of the territory of the Vaudois, or of the people of the Vaudois. Their hills were shrouded in cloud and rain all the while I lived amongst them; and although my intention was to visit on foot every inch of their country, and more especially the scenes of their great struggles, I was compelled, after waiting well nigh a week, to take my departure without having accomplished this part of my object. Leaving, then, the seeing and describing these famous valleys to some possibly future day, all I shall attempt here is to convey some idea of the structural arrangement—the osteology, if I may call it so—of the Waldensian territory, and the general condition of the Waldensian people. First, of their country.
A country and its people can never well be separated. The former, with silent but ceaseless influence, moulds the genius and habits of the latter, and determines the character of their history. It marks them out as fated for slavery or freedom,—degradation or glory. The country of the Vaudois is the material basis of their history; and the sublime points of their scenery join in, as it were, with the sublime passages of their nation. Without such a country, we cannot conceive how the Vaudois could have escaped extermination. The fertility and grandeur of their valleys were no chance gifts, but special endowments, having reference to the mighty moral struggle of which they were the destined theatre. It is this sentiment that forms the living spirit in the beautiful lines of Mrs Hemans, entitled, "The Hymn of the Vaudois Mountaineers:"—
For the strength of the hills we bless thee.Our God, our fathers' God.Thou hast made thy children mighty,By the touch of the mountain sod.Thou hast fixed our ark of refugeWhere the spoiler's foot ne'er trod;For the strength of the hills we bless thee,Our God, our fathers' God!We are watchers of a beaconWhose light must never die;We are guardians of an altar'Midst the silence of the sky.The rocks yield founts of courage,Struck forth as by thy rod;For the strength of the hills we bless thee,Our God, our fathers' God!For the dark resounding caverns,Where thy still small voice is heard;For the strong pines of the forestsThat by thy breath are stirred;For the storms on whose free pinionsThy spirit walks abroad;For the strength of the hills we bless thee,Our God, our fathers' God!The banner of the chieftainFar, far below us waves;The war horse of the spearmanCannot reach our lofty caves.Thy dark clouds wrap the thresholdOf freedom's last abode;For the strength of the hills we bless thee,Our God, our fathers' God!For the shadow of thy presenceRound our camp of rock outspread;For the stern defiles of battle,Bearing record of our dead;For the snows and for the torrents,For the free heart's burial sod;For the strength of the hills we bless thee,Our God, our fathers' God!
We read in the Apocalypse, that "the woman fled into the wilderness, where she had a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days." "A place prepared" undoubtedly implies a special arrangement and a special adaptation, in the future dwelling of the Church, to the mission to be assigned her. The "wilderness" of the Apocalypse, we are inclined to think, is the great chain of the Alps; and the "place prepared" in that wilderness, we are also inclined to think, are the Cottian Alps, and more especially those valleys in the Cottian Alps which the confessors, known as the Vaudois, inhabited. Long after Rome had subjugated the plains, she possessed scarce a foot-breadth among the mountains. These, throughout well-nigh their entire extent, from where the Simplon road now cuts the chain, to the sea, were peopled by the professors of the gospel. They were a Goshen of light in the midst of an Egypt of darkness; and in these peaceful and sublime solitudes holy men fed their flocks amid the green pastures and beside the clear waters of evangelical truth. But persecution came: it waxed hot; and every succeeding century beheld these 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 I take it, lies in this, that the three valleys have their entrance within a comparatively narrow space. The country of the Vaudois was, in fact, an immense citadel, with its foundation on the rock, and its top above the clouds, and with but one gate of entrance. That gate could be easily defended; nay, itwasdefended. He who built this mighty fortress had thrown up a rampart before its gate, as if with a special eye to the protection of its inmates. The long hill of which I have already spoken, which rises to a height of from four to five hundred feet, lies across the opening of these valleys, at about a mile's breadth, and serves as a wall of defence. But even granting that this entrance should be forced, as it sometimes was, there were ample means within the mountains themselves, which were but a congeries of fortresses, for prolonging the contest. The valleys abound with gorges and narrow passages, where one man might maintain the way against fifty. There were, too, escarpments of rock, with galleries and caves known only to the Vaudois. Even the mists of their hills befriended them; veiling them, on some memorable instances, from the keen pursuit of their foes. Thus, every foot-breadth of their territory was capable of being contested, andwascontested against the flower of the French and Sardinian armies, led against them in overwhelming numbers, with a courage which Rome never excelled, and a patriotism which Greece never equalled.
I found, too, that it was "a good land" which the Lord their God had given to the Vaudois,—"a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil, olive and honey." The same architect who built the fortress had provisioned it, so to speak, and that in no stinted measure. He who placed magazinesof bread in the clouds, and rained it upon the Israelites when they journeyed through the desert, had laid up store of corn, and oil, and wine, in the soil of these valleys; so that the Vaudois, when their enemies pressed them on the plain, and cut off their supplies from without, might still enjoy within their own mountain rampart abundance of all things.
On the first morning after my arrival, I walked out along the Val Lucerna southward. Flowers and fruit in rich profusion covered every spot of ground under the eye, from the banks of the stream to the skirts of the mist that veiled the mountains. The fields, which were covered with the various cultivation of wheat, maize, orchards, and vineyards, were fenced with neatly dressed hedge-rows. The vine-stocks were magnificently large, and their leaves had already acquired the fine golden yellow which autumn imparts. At a little distance, on a low hill, deeply embosomed in foliage, was the church of San Giovanni, looking as brilliantly white as if it had been a piece of marble fresh from the chisel. Hard by, peeping out amidst fruit-bearing trees, was the village of Lucerna. On the right rose the mighty wall of the Alps; on the left the valley opened out into the plain of the Po, bounded by a range of blue-tinted hills, which stretched away to the south-west, mingling in the distant horizon with the mightier masses of the Alps. The sun now broke through the haze; and his rays, falling on the luxuriant beauty of the valley, and on the more varied but not less rich covering of the hill-side,—the pasturages, the winding belts of planting, the white chalets,—lighted up a picture which a painter might have exhibited as a relic of an unfallen world, or a reminiscence of that garden from which transgression drove man forth.
After breakfast, I sallied out to explore the valley of Lucerne,at the entrance of which is placed, as I have said, La Tour, the capital of the Waldenses. My intention was to trace its windings all the way, past the village and church of Bobbio, and up the mountains, till it loses itself amid the snows of their summits,—an expedition which was brought to an abrupt termination by the black clouds which came rolling up the valley at noon like the smoke of a furnace, followed by torrents of rain. Threading my way through the narrow winding street of La Tour, and skirting the base of the giant Castelluzzo, I emerged upon the open valley. I was enchanted by its mingled loveliness and grandeur. Its bottom, which might be from one to two miles in breadth, though looking narrower, from the titanic character of its mountain-boundary, was, up to a certain point, one continuous vineyard. The vine there attains a noble stature, and stretches its arms from side to side of the valley in rich and lovely festoons, veiling from the great heat of the sun the golden grain which grows underneath. On either hand the mountains rise to the sky, not bare and rocky, but glowing with the vine, or shady with the chestnut, and pouring into the lap of the Vaudois, corn, and wine, and fruit. Their sides were covered throughout with vineyards, corn-fields, glades of green pasturages, clumps of forests and fruit-trees, mansions and chalets, and silvery streamlets, which meandered amid their terraces, or leaped in flashing light down the mountain, to join the Pelice at its bottom. Not a foot-breadth was barren. This teeming luxuriance attested at once the qualities of the soil and sun, and the industry of the Vaudois.
As I proceeded up the Val Lucerna, the same scene of mingled richness and magnificence continued. The golden vine still kept its place in the bottom of the valley, and stretched out its arms in very wantonness, as if the limits ofthe Val Lucerna were too small for its exuberant and generous fruitfulness. The hills gained in height, without losing in fertility and beauty. They offered to the eye the same picture of vine-rows, pasturages, chestnut-groves, and chalets, from the torrent at their bottom, up to the edge of the floating mist that covered their tops. At times the sun would break in, and add to the variety of lights which diversified the landscape. For already the hand of autumn had scattered over the foliage her beautiful tints of all shades, from the bright green of the pastures, down through the golden yellow of the vine, to the deep crimson of those trees which are the first to fade.
A farther advance, and the aspect of the Val Lucerna changed slightly. The vineyards ceased on the level grounds at the bottom of the valley, and in their place came rich meadow lands, on which herds were grazing. The hills on the left were still ribbed with the vine. On the right, along which, at a high level on the hill-side, ran the road, the chestnut groves became more frequent, and large boulders began occasionally to be seen. It was here that the rolling mass of cloud, so fearfully black, that it seemed of denser materials than vapour, which had followed me up hill, overtook me, and by the deluge of rain which it let fall, effectually forbade my farther progress.
The same shower which forbade my farther exploration of the Val Lucerna, arresting me, with cruel interdict, as it seemed, on the very threshold of a region teeming with grandeur, and encompassed with the halo of imperishable deeds, threw me, by a sort of compensatory chance, upon the discovery of another most interesting peculiarity of the Waldensian territory. The heavy rain compelled me to seek shelter beneath the boughs of a wide-spread chestnut-tree; and there,for the space of an hour, I remained perfectly dry, though the big drops were falling all around. Soon a continuous beating, as if of the fall of substances from a considerable height on the ground, attracted my attention,—tap, tap, tap. The sound told me that something was falling bigger and heavier than the rain-drops; but the long grass prevented me at first seeing what it was. A slight search, however, showed me that the tree beneath which I stood was actually letting fall a shower of nuts. These nuts were large and fully ripened. The breeze became slightly stronger, and the fruit shower from the trees increased so much, that a soft muffled sound rang through the whole wood. It was literally raining food. Some millions of nuts must have fallen that day in the Val Lucerna. I saw the young peasant girls coming from the chalets and farm-houses, to glean beneath the boughs; and a short time sufficed to fill their sacks, and send them back laden with the produce of the chestnut-tree. These nuts are roasted and eaten as food; and very nutritious food they are. In all the towns of northern Italy you see persons in the streets roasting them in braziers over charcoal fires, and selling them to the people, to whom they form no very inconsiderable part of their food. I have oftener than once, on a long ride, breakfasted on them, with the help of a cluster of grapes, or a few apples. This was the manna of the Waldenses. And how often have the persecuted Vaudois, when driven from their homes, and compelled to seek refuge in those high altitudes where the vine does not grow, subsisted for days and weeks upon the produce of the chestnut-tree! I could not but admire in this the wise arrangement of Him who had prepared these valleys as the future abode of his Church. Not only had He taught the earth to yield her corn, and the hills wine, but even the skies bread. Bread was rained around theircaves and hiding-places, plenteous as the manna of old; and the Vaudois, like the Israelites, had but to gather and eat.
I came also to the conclusion, that the land which the Lord had given to the Waldenses was a "large" as well as a "good" land. It is only of late that the Vaudois have been restricted to the three valleys I have named; but even taking their country as at present defined, its superficial area is by no means so inconsiderable as it is apt to be accounted by one who hears of it as confined to but three valleys. Spread out these valleys into level plains, and you find that they form a large country. It is not only the broad bottom of the valley that is cultivated;—the sides of the hills are clothed up to the very clouds with vineyards and corn-lands, and are planted with all manner of trees, yielding fruit after their kind. Where the husbandman is compelled to stop, nature takes up the task of the cultivator; and then come the chestnut-groves, with their loads of fruit, and the short sweet grass on which cattle depasture in summer, and the wild flowers from which the bees elaborate their honey. Overtopping all are the fields of snow, the great reservoirs of the springs and rivers which fertilize the country. This arrangement admitted, moreover, of far greater variety, both of climate and of produce, than could possibly obtain on the plain. There is an eternal winter at the summit of these mountains, and an almost perpetual summer at their feet.
In accordance with this great productiveness, I found the hills of the Vaudois exceedingly populous. They are alive with men, at least as compared with the solitude which our Scottish Highlands present. I had brought thither my notions of a valley taken from the narrow winding and infertile straths of Scotland, capable of feeding only a few scores of inhabitants.Here I found that a valley might be a country, and contain almost a nation in its bosom.
But, not to dwell on other peculiarities, I would remark, that such a dwelling as this—continually presenting the grandest objects—must have exerted a marked influence upon the character of the inhabitants. It was fitted to engender intrepidity of mind, a love of freedom, and an elevation of thought. It has been remarked that the inhabitants of mountainous regions are less prone than others to the worship of images. On the plain all is monotony. Summer and winter, the same landmarks, the same sky, the same sounds, surround the man. But around the dweller in the mountains,—and especially such mountains as these,—all is variety and grandeur. Now the Alps are seen with their sunlight summits and their shadowless sides; anon they veil their mighty forms in clouds and tempests. The living machinery of the mist, too, is continually varying the landscape, now engulphing valleys, now blotting out crags and mountain peaks, and suspending before the eye a cold and cheerless curtain of vapour; anon the curtain rises, the mist rolls away, and green valley and tall mountain flash back again upon you, thrilling and delighting you anew. What variety and melody of sounds, too, exist among the hills! The music of the streams, the voices of the peasants, the herdsman's song, the lowing of the cattle, the hum of the villages. The winds, with mighty organ-swell, now sweep through their mountain gorges; and now the thunder utters his awful voice, making the Alps to tremble and their pines to bow.
Such was the land of the Vaudois; the predestined abode of God's Church during the long and gloomy period of Anti-christ's reign. It was the ark in which the one elect family of Christendom was to be preserved during the flood of errorthat was to come upon the earth. And I have been the more minute in the description of its general structure and arrangements, because all had reference to the high moral end it was appointed to serve in the economy of Providence.
When of old a flood of waters was to be sent on the world, Noah was commanded to build an ark of gopher wood for the saving of his house. God gave him special instructions regarding its length, its breadth, its height: he was told where to place its door and window, how to arrange its storeys and rooms, and specially to gather "of all food that is eaten," that it might be for food for him and those with him. When all had been done according to the Divine instructions, God shut in Noah, and the flood came.
So was it once more. A flood was to come upon the earth; but now God himself prepared the ark in which the chosen family were to be saved. He laid its foundations in the depths, and built up its wall of rock to the sky. A door also made He for the ark, with lower, second, and third storeys. It was beautiful as strong. Corn, wine, and oil were laid up in store within it. All being ready, God said to his persecuted ones in the early Church, "Come, thou and all thy house, into the ark." He gave them the Bible to be a light to them during the darkness, and shut them in. The flood came. Century after century the waters of Papal superstition continued to prevail upon the earth. At length all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered, and all flesh died, save the little company in the Vaudois ark.