lines to you, which I hope you will pardon me for. I felt as if I could not do otherwise, for I question if I shall ever live to see you any more in this world; but I hope we shall meet in the next, in that upper and better world which you told us of when I heard you last May.

"I was at the fair with my swing-boat. On the Sunday there was a lady giving tracts away at the stalls, etc. I stood and looked at her, and she soon came to where I was standing. She went to a stall where two men were sitting, and they would not have any tract. I asked her if she would give me one; she said, 'Oh yes.' I took it, and I said, 'I think I shall walk up the hill and read it instead of going to the public-house.' She said, 'Oh yes, do; it is much better.' She said, 'We have a chapel here just by, and if I were you I would go there.' I said, 'No, I would not.' And in such a kind manner she said, 'Why not? I would if I were you. But I again said, I would not, for I never had been. And she said again the third time, Oh, I would if I were you; you may never have another opportunity; life is very uncertain; you may never see another sabbath on earth.' I still told her I would not go. I went on up the road and read part of the Tract, and the title was, 'Now is the accepted time.'

"I thought, surely this woman is a Christian. I turned back. I thought to myself I will indeed go; and blessed be God that I ever saw that person to invite me to the house of God! I cannot tell you who she is, but she was at the chapel. And it was by your preaching that I was brought to see my sinfulness. The text was, Psalm cxix. 60th verse, I made haste, and delayed not to keep thy commandments.' It was then that I found that I was a sinner, and then I was directed to the Lamb of God who taketh away all sin. O dear sir, what should I do if I had religion to seek now near at death's door?

"I would write more, but I am so weak I cannot. I hope you will pray for me that I may be kept from the temptations and that I may enemy, fall asleep in Jesus."

of the

For the blind and the cripple were there,
And the babe that pined for bread;
And the houseless man, and the widow poor,
Who begg'd to bury the dead;

The naked, alas! that I might have clad,
The famish'd I might have fed.

The sorrow I might have soothed,
And the unregarded tears;

For many a thronging shape was there
From long forgotten years;
Ay even the poor rejected Moor,
Who raised my childish fears.

Each pleading look that long ago,
I scanned with a heedless eye,
Each face was gazing as plainly there
As when I past it by.

Woe, woe for me if the past should be
Thus present when I die!

Alas! I have walk'd through life
Too heedless where I trod,

Nay, helping to trample my fellow man,
And fill the burial sod;

Forgetting that even the sparrow's fall
Is not unmark'd of God.

I drank the richest draughts,
And ate whatever is good,
Fish, and flesh, and fowl, and fruit,
Supplied my hungry mood;

But I never remember'd the wretched ones
That starve for want of food.

I dress'd as the noble dress,

In cloth of silver and gold,

With silk and satin, and costly furs,
In many an ample fold;

But I never remember'd the naked limbs
That froze with the winter's cold.-

The wounds I might have heal'd!

The human sorrow and smart!

And yet it never was in my soul
To play so ill a part.

But evil is wrought by want of thought,
As well as want of heart.

She clasp'd her fervent hands,

And the tears began to stream;

Large, and bitter, and fast they fell,

Remorse was so extreme.

And yet, oh! yet, that many a dame
Would dream the lady's dream!

THE PIEDMONTESE MARTYR, 1558.

FROM a very early hour on the morning of the 29th of March, 1558, an unusual movement, such as was customary on great festivals, was observable in even the most retired streets of Turin, the capital of Piedmont; but nowhere so much as in the castle square and the adjoining streets. It was not yet nine o'clock, and yet this large space, capable of holding several thousand persons, was crammed with people, while in the windows and balconies, and on the terraces and roofs of the palaces, wherever a foot could be placed, heads might be seen piled one above another to a prodigious height.

To what great sight was it that, at so early an hour, and with such earnestness, the whole population, nobility and peasants, citizens and priests, men and women were pressed together, in full dress, as though it were a day of public rejoicing?

A large post erected opposite the east gate of the castle, with fagots piled around it, and further on towards the middle of the square, a large amphitheatre by way of a judicial

DECEMBER, 1848.

N

tribunal, told plainly enough that the spectacle was to be an execution, and that fire was to be the instrument to effect it.

But to what class of criminals did the wretched being belong who was about to suffer so terrible a martyrdom? Had this question been put to one of the crowd, he might have answered, "This man has neither committed murder, nor stolen, nor been guilty of poisoning or witchcraft; he has not betrayed his king or his country.' What then had he done to incur such punishment? No wrong; but he bore a name which at that time constituted a crime greater than all crimes put together; a name which had already lighted thousands of piles, and for a long time yet was to light thousands more; he was a heretic, a Vaudois, and his crime, a horrible crime in those days, was that of worshipping God in a different manner from that of the greater number of mankind, and of seeking salvation by another way than that which councils had fixed and authorized. The soul of such a man was lost-lost without remedy, lost for eternity, since out of the church there is no salvation; and as if this were not already bad enough for him, it was thought a duty to anticipate the condemnation of God's justice by torments and punishments; so much was the truth, that faith is of grace, lost sight of: so much had the law of love, which the Saviour of the world made the fundamental law of his kingdom, been forgotten and misunderstood !

It was then to do the duty of good Christians, and a work of merit, that this whole people, even women, girls, overcoming the most natural feelings of their sex had come to feast their eyes on the last convulsions of an agonized man. Many doubtless were also led by a feeling of curiosity, frequently natural, but which, on this occasion was particularly called forth by the extraordinary circumstances connected with the person who was the object of it.

The man who was about to be burned as a Vaudois, had not originally sprung from that people, and it was rather in the ranks of their persecutors, than among the martyrs to their cause, that he might have been expected to be found. His name was Giaffredo Varaglia, born at Busca, a small town in the territory of the marquis of Saluzzo. He was the only son of a man who had distinguished himself among the foremost in the dreadful crusade against the Vaudois in 1488, and he had not belied his origin; for having become a monk, he had laboured, by speech, in the work of conversion which his father had begun by the sword. Both means, however, had been equally powerless, and the subtleties of the Franciscan,

like the sword of the captain, had been broken to pieces by the firmness of the mountaineers, and their humble submission to the word of God. Perhaps indeed the monk, without saying anything about it, had himself received the deepest wounds in this contest. This much is certain, that very soon afterwards the austerities of his order were found insufficient to satisfy the craving after perfection which devoured him; the friar Giaffredo abandoned the Franciscans to join the Capuchins, whose order had lately been instituted. Their excessive austerities and high reputation for sanctity, but above all the unrivalled eloquence of,the friar Bernardino da Sienna, brought great renown upon this order, of which he had been twice made general. On all sides the people called for preachers from among them, and it was in this character that Giaffredo, and twelve other monks with him, had, in company with Bernardino, gone through the different towns of Italy. When, however, Bernardino, being unable any longer to hide his real convictions, quitted his country and retired to Geneva, the great scandal which arose from this event could not but affect his companions, who, becoming suspected at the court of Rome, were immediately recalled thither, and were subjected for several years to a strict surveillance. Giaffredo being, perhaps, more suspected than the others, was only restored to complete liberty when he consented to change his monk's frock for the dress of a secular priest. In this new character, and provided with a pension and large benefices, he followed the pope's legate to the court of France. After this, on his return from the embassy, when at Lyons, the doubts which he had long felt in regard to his professed creed having only become stronger, he took leave of the legate and retired to Geneva. All this happened in 1556, Giaffredo being then forty-nine years of age. About a year afterwards, the church of San Giovanni, in the Val-Lucerna, being in want of a pastor, he was sent there, and for several months exercised his ministry with much benefit among the very people whom he had formerly attacked. At length being very desirous of visiting his native town, and some Christian people in the neighbourhood, he determined to make the journey. Alas! his farewell to his parishioners, on quitting them, was his last. On his return, as he was passing through the town of Barge, he was arrested and thrown into prison, from whence, though he had the opportunity, he refused to escape, rather than forfeit his word. He was then sent to Turin to be tried as a heretic. There, when examined as to his past history, his connexions,