him! The time is hastening when it shall no longer be a strange book in Italy, nor its doctrines hidden. For six or seven

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days Silvio had been in a state of doubt, prayerlessness, and almost desperation. Yet he sang with a pretended merriment, and sought to amuse himself with foolish pleasantries. “My Bible," he says, was covered with dust. One of the children of the jailor said to me one day, while caressing me, 'Since you have left off reading in that villain of a book, it seems to me you are not so sad as before.' Silvio had been putting

on a forced gayety.

"It seems to you?" said he.

"I took my Bible, brushed away the dust with a pockethandkerchief, and opening it at hazard, my eyes fell upon these words: And he said to his disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come, but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh. It were better for him that a millstone were cast about his neck, and he thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.'

"Struck with meeting these words, I was ashamed that this little child should have perceived, by the dust with which my Bible was covered, that I read it no more, and that he should have supposed that I had become more sociable and pleasant by forgetting God. I was completely desolate at having so scandalized him. You little rogue, said I, with a caressing reproof, this is not a villain book, and during the several days that I have neglected to read in it, I am become much worse. My singing that you have heard is only a force-put, and my ill humour, which I try to drive away when your mother lets you in to see me, all comes back when I am alone.

"The little child went out, and I experienced a degree of satisfaction at having got my Bible again in my hands, and at having confessed that without it I had grown worse. It seemed as if I were making some reparation to a generous friend, whom I had unjustly offended, and that I was again reconciled to him.

"And I had abandoned thee, O my God! cried I, and I was perverted! and I could even believe that the infamous laugh of the cynic and sceptic was suited to my despairing condition!

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I

"I pronounced these words with indescribable emotion. placed my Bible on a chair, I kneeled down upon the earth to read it, and I, who weep with so much difficulty, burst into

tears.

"These tears were a thousand times sweeter than my brutish joy. I saw my God again! I loved him! I repented that I had so insulted him in degrading myself, and I promised never more to be separated from him, never. How does a sincere return to the path of duty comfort and elevate the soul !

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I read and wept and lamented during more than an hour, and arose full of confidence in the thought that God was with me, and that he had pardoned my delirium. Then my misfortunes, the torments of the trial, the probability of the torture, appeared to me a very little thing. I could rejoice in suffering, since I might fulfil a sacred duty, which was to obey the Saviour, in suffering with resignation."

There are still hearts like Silvio Pellico's in Italy, and when the word of God comes to this people, it will have all the greater power for having been so long kept from them. When the spirit of the mouth of the Lord kindles the fire, it will spread among Italian hearts like a flame in the dry grass of the prai ries. Under this fire the superstitions of Romanism would perish. The idolatry of forms can no more stand against the burning spirit of God's word than the seared leaves and withered branches of the woods in autumn could stand before a forest conflagration.

Frank-hearted Silvio Pellico! How many a man has let the

dust grow thick upon his Bible, not in prison merely, but even

his family Bible, even with dear children around him, and never confessed his sin, never gone back with tears of contrition to that Holy Book, nor taught it in his household, nor had the light of Truth Divine, the light from Heaven shining on it! How like a dungeon with false and foul thoughts must every heart be out of which God and the dear light of his word are excluded! Yea, though there may be laughter there, it is like poor Silvio's false and forced despairing merriment, it is like the crackling of thorns under a pot. Heavy laws are up

on such a man, and when friends depart, and he sees himself in prison, sees how he is in prison, even though he walks in the open air, then there is desolation indeed.

"If there be one who need bemoan

His kindred laid in earth,

The household hearts that were his own,

It is the man of mirth."

CHAPTER LXXI.

THE FAREWELL.- -SWISS CHARACTER AND FREEDOM.

WE are no longer under the Shadow of the Jungfrau, and therefore it is high time that I close this second fasciculus of the leaves of our pilgrimage. I might have extended it into the Cottian Alps, amidst the interesting Churches of the Waldenses, but such a ramble ought not to come at the end of a volume. We will stop at Milan, in full sight of the glorious Alps, among which we have been wandering. From a splendid spire in the midst of a region of despotism, we are gazing across upon the mountain shrines of liberty. My readers will listen with pleasure to the parting reflections of a young and gifted English lady in regard to the Swiss character, the Swiss freedom, and in spite of all disastrous omens, the hopes of Switzerland, and of the hearty friends of that glorious country, for future, settled, permanent, well-ordered LIBERTY.

"You are not to suppose," says Miss Lamont, in her interesting volume of letters on France and Switzerland, “that I have taken up my opinions about the Swiss from occasional gleanings by the eye and ear as I went along. I got a history of Switzerland to read, since I have been here; not indeed, so extended a history as I should like on such a subject, yet it still helped me a little. At first I did not like it much-it seemed to me nothing better than war after war of tribes and Indians. It improved towards the last, yet still was but a detail of battles, year after year, of the people against the nobles; this can only interest when the characters of individual leaders are por

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trayed-it does not do so in masses. However, I was glad to have, even from that history, a reason for the faith that was in me respecting the obstinate prowess of the Swiss, and their honest love of independence. And, had I wanted anything to confirm me in the love of freedom which, untaught by any one, has become an essential portion of my mind, I should have found it in my Swiss book, and my Swiss journey. Not that there is here a more advanced social state than in any other country of Europe, nor a greater progress in science, the arts, and education; but there is what is a hundred-fold betterthere is a general diffusion of substantial happiness, so to speak. After all, it is not disheartening to look over the map of Europe, and behold only this one spot on which liberty is to be found? And what, though it was brought forth amidst the contests of barbarian hordes, and baptized, re-baptized, and baptized again on battle-fields reeking with blood, it is liberty; and if the Swiss be but true to themselves, and permit this child of theirs to grow to its full stature, it may become a guide to the nations! Yet, disheartening as it is, to see but one free land, it is more so to reflect that ages must roll on before others can be free; for the more we know of the state of Europe, it becomes the more evident that the chains which have been centuries in forming, it will take centuries to break effectually. Look at Germany, bound down by emperor, king, prince, duke, and noble of every kind, each bond so weak in itself, yet all so impossible to rend! Look at Russia, where the barbaric forms of the undisguised despotisms of the East are adding to themselves the astuteness of modern tyrannies. Look at England, where the despotism of castes, a social despotism exists, of even a worse sort than that of a tyrannical monarch; and in France, where the contending elements of social corruption raised so terrific a storm, there is little hope of the speedy establishment of liberty. Let the Swiss bless their nountains, crags, and torrents, which, making their men hardy in body, made them incapable of being trodden into slaves; made them able to renew the battle from year to year, from age to age, until all has been gained! and, now, let them dread the love of gain; they could be courageous and virtuous, being

poor, I distrust them if they shall become rich! Here is declamation enough, you will say; but I know you hope with me, that now that they have gained all they desired, they will proceed in the march of improvement. They have bought their freedom by six hundred years of contest and bloodshed (not too high a price for what is immortal worth), and now they have to do something more difficult than what they have done, they have to use their freedom wisely. They have to make it the guide, the aid, to piety, humanity, liberality, knowledge; if wealth—if power, be what it inspire them to seek, their freedom will slide from their hold, when the nations now so far behind them have attained it."

But more than all this, what Switzerland needs to make the country a centre of light and hope in all Europe, is true Religious Liberty. God grant there may be no more conflicts of armed men about religion. There can be none, when the question of a man's creed and clergyman is once totally separated from the question of his civil and political obligations and duties, and made the business solely between his conscience and his God. The choice of one's church is a civil right, in which all that any government has to do, is to protect the subject in its unmolested enjoyment. It is also a religious obligation, but an obligation towards God, with which no government on earth has any right to interfere. Every man has a right to the protection of the civil government in the performance of his religious duties; no government has any right to prescribe or enforce those duties. When the State attempts to stand in the place of God, and to legislate for the church, it becomes a despotism; when the church attempts to use the state for the enforcement of its own edicts, and the support of its establishments, it also becomes a despotism; but where the spirit of the Lord is, there is LIBERTY.

Farewell now to Alpine nature, that world of such glorious images and thoughts! He who has visited it with a wakeful soul, and felt the steadfast eye of its great mountains upon him, whether beneath the glittering sun or the mild melancholy moon, whether at day-dawn or in the flush of sunset, and seen the rush of its white avalanches, and heard their thunder, and