manner of the gentlemen of the guard, Swiss,
halberdiers of the king, and others who hedge
them in. There is a grim humour in all his
pictures; but the best of it is, the good
Benedictine does not at all see what a sledge-hammer
argument such fearful scenes are against
his own creed.

Bad enough, in all conscience, were these
Huguenot persecutions; but much worse were
the cruelties perpetrated in the name of religion
by Madame de Maintenon and the Grand
Monarque on the wretched Camisards (" smock-
frocks," Auvergne shepherds) and Protestants
of various denominations, whom the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes left defenceless.
We have all read something about those bad
times about the dragonnades, and the Duke
de la Force's mission bottée. We know that
numbers of the refugees came over here, went to
Berlin, which got to be more French than German,
settled in Holland, where the States pensioned
them, went anywhere, to escape the paternal
rule which settled their faith for them as well
as all other matters. Probably those who came
to England fared worst. In lreland they did well;
they behaved finely at the Boyne, when the few
troops of Irish horse, which did come on in
spite of James's " strategic movement," charged
so furiously into the water that they broke the
Dutch guards. Then, in answer to Duke
Schomberg's "Messieurs, voilà vos persécuteurs,"
on went the refugees as one man,
and pretty soon cleared the river. Many good
names in Ireland are traced to them; so are
our Romillys, and Bosanquents, Foublanques,
and three or four more notable names. But,
in the main, for such picked men, they have
not done much in England.

Strangely enough, the thing that is absolutely
wanting in the Huguenot memoirs that
have lately been reprinted, and which most of
our reviews have already seized upon, is
theological bitterness. There is nothing theological
in them from beginning to end, and very
little conventionally religious. Of course these
men had a reason for their faith, and could
argue on occasion; and there were plenty of
occasions, for, though one good curé does try to
convert a lad of sixteen by offering him his
pretty young niece with a large dowry, still the
chaplains in prison and in the galleys are at them
incessantly, clinching every argument with the
argumentum ad hominem, "Well, you know,
you've only got to say the word, and in forty-
eight hours you'll be free." They could argue ;
though their blood was perhaps more eloquent
than their words, as Jean Bion found when,
being chaplain on board the Superbe, he went
down into the hold to " exhort" the poor
wretches who had just been bastinadoed for
refusing to kneel at mass. What state he found
them in you may imagine, if you can form any
idea of what bastinadoing is like ; and instead
of his exhorting them, they exhorted him, and
showed such calm Christian courage, that from
that moment Bion became a convert, and after
suffering the same things, escaped, and published
his book in Amsterdam. We think of a certain
pair in prison at Philippi, who also comforted
tlieir jailer and left him rejoicing; and we can
understand how Bion should say, " Their blood
preached to me, and I felt myself a Protestant."
But they clearly do not think religious talk the
thing in historical narratives. When Marteilhe
of Bergerac, whose story is perhaps the most
interesting of them all, tells how, though firm in
their faith, he and his comrade did " suppress
the truth a little" as to their object in being on
the frontier, he regrets his conduct, but he does
not talk about " repenting in dust and ashes,"
or use any of the language which so often spoils
the memoirs of good men among ourselves. M.
Coquerel, the French pastor, who has given us
in his Convicts for the Faith an epitome of
several touching narratives, thinks it necessary
to apologise for this. He is rather scandalised
that men who had passed through such perils in
such a cause should talk more in a style which
anticipates Rousseau than in that of the Apostles.
As sincere they are as our own Puritans,
but certainly not so Biblical, though M.
Coquerel's charge of Rousseauism certainly
seems unmerited. Those who want sentiment
and sensation must go to Sue's wild novel about
the preachers in the wilderness and the
Gentlemen Glass Burners, or to Miss Ouvry, who
has worked up Arnold Delahaize and Henri de
Rohan out of her own imagination and the
records of the time. The Memoirs of Marteilhe
de Bergerac, and the autobiography of Jean
Fabre, who gave himself up to rescue his father,
are simple details of fact. They are "sensational"
enough in themselves, and (as for
marvels) what marvel so great, since the days
when his councillors asked Pharaoh, " Seest
thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?" as the
blind stubbornness of kings and statesmen in
deliberately spoiling their country of its best
inhabitants? Marteilhe's book had become  exceedingly
scarce; only three copies of it were known
to exist. Michelet, the historian, who got hold
of it, and discovered its worth, gave the French.
Protestants a sharp reproof for not reprinting it.
So not long ago it was reprinted, along with
several other memoirs, and hence all the recent
talk and writing about Huguenots here and in
France. Besides the memoirs, lists have come
out, showing that between 1684 and 1762 at
least fourteen hundred and eighty were sent to
the galleys "for being found on the frontier without
a passport." The poor creatures were as
badly off as the Britons when they cried, " The
barbarians drive us to the sea, and the sea drives
us back to the barbarians." Stay in France
and you must conform, or your children will be
taken from you, and you subjected to all sorts
of pains and penalties. Try to run off, and, if
caught, you will be sent to the galleys.

And what does "sending to the galleys"
mean? You know what the "hulks" are: that
life would be bad enough for people who have
done no wrong; but that life, at its worst, is
paradise compared to what the galley-slave had
to go through. Here they were, five chained
to each oar, sleeping like dogs, huddled together
under the benches, exposed to all sorts of