nothing. A fire was quickly lighted; wine and other dainties were placed upon the table; and a pressing invitation was sent me to stay all night, with the assurance that M. Canton would join me in the evening. I regretted much that my arrangements did not permit of this.

The presbytère, which has all the elegancies and comforts of an English vicarage, is seated on the summit of a lower alp, just where the mountains stoop abruptly down, and sink into the plains of Piedmont. A door was thrown open, and I was invited to walk out upon the balcony. I did so. The effect was instantaneous and overpowering, and made me fall back. It was like the rising of the veil of another world. I had entered the manse on its other side from a mist-shaded glen, but the first step on the balcony had flung open a whole kingdom, or rather, as I felt at the moment, a world to my view. Cis-Apennine Italy lay at my feet.

I can convey to the reader no idea of the extent. and magnificence of the scene, or of the wonder with which I continued to gaze upon it. It impressed me the more, doubtless, from its offering a perfect contrast to the scenes with which I had been conversant for days past. It challenged ad

MAGNIFICENT VIEW.

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miration by one element alone-vastness to wit, illimitable vastness. From the bottom of the mountain on which I stood, it stretched out and out till it met the far-off line where the firmament stooped down upon it. From the Western Alps it ran on and on to the farthest east. But what a multiplicity of objects dotted its mighty surface! Spires stood up, no bigger than the small pins which the gardener in spring sticks into the earth to mark where he has sown his seed. White specks were seen where cities stood; larger patches of dark green betokened the existence of chestnut and walnut woods; and bright silver threads, woven into the green web of the plain, shewed where rivers rolled along to the sea. But what struck me most was the unusual aspect of its atmospheric phenoThe clouds which were hung in its sky were many hundred feet below me, and I looked down upon them as they moved athwart the plain, driven by the winds. A black thunder-cloud had gathered above Turin, and it came forward, like a sweeping charge of cavalry, right in the direction of Prarustino. It shot its bolts as it came onward, and I could distinctly mark the red forked line of its lightnings as they darted from the cloud to the

mena.

plain, and saw the long trail of its showers as they followed hard in the track of its march. I reckoned

that soon it would be upon me; but before it had got half-way across the plain, it took off, and rolled its dark masses up the gorge of Susa, on the left, to find its final resting-place on Mont Cenis.

I lingered long on the balcony, gazing on the measureless scene outspread beneath me. I felt as if I occupied a point outside the world, where I could tranquilly stand and look down upon the cities and mountain chains of earth, and upon the clouds and storms of its sky, that were rolling and flashing far beneath. This was the closing scene of my journey. The panorama of my tour was now terminating with the mightiest and grandest scene of all.

I had yet a walk of twelve miles to La Torre. The evening set in with lashing rain and vivid gleams of lightning, but about eight o'clock I reached in safety the hotel L'Ours. There followed a few quiet days, during which I climbed to the summit of the Castelluzzo, and had another walk to Bobbio, after which I started for home.

THE PAST AND THE PRESENT.

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CHAPTER XXII.

Conclusion.

The Past the Interpreter of the Present-Assassination-Retribution -Why is Piedmont Free ?-The Waldenses the Authors of its Liberties-Liberty Worth its Price-Spain-France-British Liberty-Confessors and Martyrs the Founders of Britain's Liberty.

THE history over which we have passed so rapidly affords the true key for the right understanding of the present state of Europe. The present of the world never can stand alone; it must ever be linked with the past-linked as effect is linked to its cause, and as harvest to the seed-time. It must necessarily be So, because the race is one, and because, too, the Great Ruler pursues with regard to it a scheme of providence that is one, although progressive. This remark, true of every age, is especially true of the present. There is no understanding the moral and retributive character of the present era, but by a reference to the ages that went before it—

to the principles then propagated, and the crimes then committed.

One of the prominent crimes of the past was ASSASSINATION. The foregoing pages exhibit the Waldenses given "as sheep to the slaughter." Well, one of the prominent punishments of the present is ASSASSINATION. Who can fail seeing herein the present rising upon the world stamped with the very image of the past, and by this resemblance proclaiming itself the legitimate and necessary offspring of that past? This crime of assassination, now becoming so fearfully common as a means of taking off kings and changing Governments, is no new thing, but an old. Both in theory and practice it is old, and nothing is new about it save the particular application now made of it. Who was the great preacher of assassination in past times? We venture to say, there are more books in the Vatican library alone, ten times over, than in all Britain, recommending and urging assassination. There is no need to write new treatises; more elaborate, ingenious, and eloquent defences of this crime cannot be produced than those with which the Jesuits have already stored all the great libraries of Europe. Britain has been called “a den of assassins!" A den of