take up his abode in any other part of the parish capriciously, or longer than was necessary, they had no just cause for complaint. But independently of this, 'the repose and enjoyment of domestic life had no attraction for him,' and he thought his time better employed in any other part of the parish: for the people in this, he said, were spoilt by the advantages of their situation, and not so well inclined to profit by his instruction as the inhabitants of less favoured spots. He had indeed formed an opinion that, in his sphere of action, there was least religion where there were more comforts. The mildness of the climate at Arvieux, he said, appeared somehow or other not favourable to the growth of piety:'-and of another commune he observes, that its fertility, as well as its proximity to a high road and to a town, was a great stumbling-block.' One place is more fertile than the rest of the valley, and even produces wine; the consequence is, that there is less piety.' In the valley of Queyras, San Veran is the highest and consequently the most pious village.' And Mr. Gilly says, in his note upon this assertion, that a similar observation was made to him by more than one Vaudois pastor in Piemont, on the relative degree of piety in the lower and more elevated mountain hamlets.

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Neff's biographer seems, therefore, to think that Neff's opinion upon this point is confirmed by the testimony of other persons who have the best means of observation. It is more difficult to explain the fact in the case of the Vaudois, than to suspect how it may have originated where Neff was concerned. There can be no natural cause for it; for, though certain philosophers graduate their scale of convenient morality according to different latitudes, they have never pretended that our religious instincts are, in any degree, dependent upon such influence. The highest of Neff's hamlets were the poorest, and in the rudest state: to assign this as the reason would lead to no favourable inference, nor could such an explanation be maintained upon any fair grounds; for in no part of his extensive parish was there any great wealth, or any such superabundance of comforts as might lead to luxury. But the pastor's relative position was not the same there, as in those villages which were placed in a more fertile soil and in a more genial region. Where the manse had been provided for him, though it was nothing more than such a cottage as would be dignified to English conceptions if it were called humble, it has been seen that the people considered themselves as having a claim upon him on that score; where such a feeling could find place it is not unlikely that they looked upon his ministry as a purchasable service, and thought, perhaps, that the obligation was less on their side than on his. But in the remoter hamlets his ministry appeared to be, what in reality it was, a pure labour of love, such as, under

no

no contract, could be claimed, such as no price could pay for. There the inhabitants regarded Neff in his true character--a man possessed of attainments which might have advanced his fortune, if he had directed them towards any worldly pursuit; who came among them not for his own advantage, but for theirs; who took the liveliest interest not only in their spiritual concerns, but in their temporal welfare, and endeavoured by every possible exertion on his part to promote it. This difference alone might explain why his precepts took deeper hold upon their hearts.

There may have been another cause. Neff, like the earlier and more austere ministers of the Calvinistic school, was an enemy to sports of every kind; not merely those which, being wicked, or, in their direct and sure tendency, injurious, ought, the one to be prohibited by positive law, the other to be discouraged by all good men; but to those also which may so easily be rendered safe, and are in themselves so innocent-that none but the rigid would proscribe them. It appears that he disapproved of bowling, and he thought dancing a sin. The biographer of St. Pachomius tells us of that eminent saint, that pes ejus ad saltandum non est commotus omni vitâ suá. The Albigenses went beyond the ascetics of the deserts in their opinion upon this subject. The Huguenots derived it not from them, but from Calvin, and their intolerance of a pastime so popular in that country that it may almost be called national, is said to have greatly impeded the progress of the reformation in France. Probably, therefore, this operated against Neff in those places where cheerful circumstances and an easier condition of life left his parishioners leisure and inclination for such amusements; and if his presence cast a cloud over youthful hilarity, and prevented what had before been considered as allowable enjoyment, in that same degree must his influence for good have been diminished there. In the case of so excellent a man it is worth while to inquire into the cause of such an effect. Now in the upper regions this evil could not follow, because the arrival of their pastor produced a degree of joyous excitement; in the course of their rude and sequestered lives they had nothing else so cheerful to look forward to as his visits. And this will apply to the Vaudois also: the inhabitants of the highest and most remote hamlets seemed to be the most religious, not because they were in the rudest state and endured the hardest lot, but because their pastor was to them a person of greater importance; he was more to them, and they more to him, in consequence.

This appears more probable when the place is considered which of all others Neff preferred for his residence. It was a village, or rather hamlet, Dormilleuse by name, the highest in the Val de Fressinière. The population consists of forty families, all of the

unmixed

unmixed race of the ancient Waldenses, who never, says Neff, bowed their knee before an idol, even when all the Protestants of the valley of Queyras dissembled their faith. The ruins of the wall and forts still remain which they built to protect themselves against surprise. They owed their preservation in part to the nature of the country, which, being defended by a natural fortification of glaciers and arid rocks, is almost inaccessible: the village itself is nearly so even in the finest season of the year. There is but one approach to it, and that by a steep ascent, where, in the narrowest part of the way, a cascade throws itself over the path into the abyss below, forming a sheet of water between the face of the rock and the edge of the precipice.' When Neff made his first visit there, at the beginning of February, this was a sheet of ice, and on the Sunday morning he and some young men cut steps in it with their hatchets, that the people from the lower hamlet might ascend to the church with less danger.

Perhaps, of all the habitable spots in Europe, this wretched village is the most repulsive. Nature is stern and terrible, without offering any boon but that of personal security from the fury of the oppressor, to invite man to make his resting-place here. When the sun shines brightest, the side of the mountain opposite to Dormilleuse, and on the same level, is covered with snow, and the traveller, in search of new scenes to gratify his taste for the sublime or the beautiful, finds nothing to repay him for his pilgrimage, but the satisfaction of planting his foot on the soil, which has been hallowed as the asylum of Christians of whom the world was not worthy. The spot which they and their descendants have chosen for their last stronghold is indeed a very citadel of strength. But the eye wanders in vain for any one point of fascination. The village is not built on the summit, or on the shelf of a rock. It is not, like Forsythe's description of Cortona, "a picture hung upon a wall." It does not stand forth in bold relief, and fling defiance upon the intruder as he approaches. It is not even seen, till the upper pass is cleared, and then it disappoints expectation by its mean disclosure of a few poor huts, detached from each other, without any one building as an object of attraction, or any strongly marked feature to give a character to the scene; neither is there any view which it commands, to make amends for this defect in itself; all is cold, forlorn, and cheerless?'

The inhabitants, Neff, when he first saw them, described as a miserable and degenerate race, whose moral and physical aspect reminded the Christian that sin and death are the only true inheritance of the children of Adam. Their huts,' says Mr. Gilly, ' are wretched constructions of stone and mud, from which fresh air, comfort, and cleanliness seem to be utterly excluded.' Even in those villages where there is less physical misery, their apartments are unswept, their woollen garments (for linen is unknown among

them)

6

them) are unwashed, and their hands and faces as little accustomed to cold water, as if there was a perpetual drought in the land. 'I should fear,' says his biographer, that the excellent Neff, with all the improvements which he introduced into his parish, either omitted, or failed to convince the folks there, that cleanliness is not a forbidden luxury, but one of the necessary duties of life.' At the village of Mensas, which lies below Dormilleuse, squeezed up in the very narrowest gorge of the valley, and which early in September is buried in snow, without hope of seeing the sun during the rest of the winter, the people, in their low, dark, dirty houses, seemed, says Neff, to be satisfied with the utter misery of their condition.

the

Even in parts of Neff's parish which are to them as a garden and scene of delight, the people are in a pitiable state;' none of the comforts and very few of the conveniences of life have yet been introduced among them. They are on the very outskirts of human society; and winter brings with it privations always, and not seldom, when the seasons have proved unfavourable, dangers of extreme want. It is very seldom that they can raise more corn than for their own demand. The few cattle that they rear are not for home consumption; they must be driven far before they can be sold, and the money which is obtained for them will barely pay taxes, (for even poverty there is taxed,) and purchase indispensable household articles and instruments of husbandry. When resources fail them, such as have strength and hope enough for the exertion, emigrate like swallows, for the winter, in search, not of fortune, but of food. This was the case in the second year of Neff's residence; the dearth was so great, that many sold their cattle at any price that the purchaser would be pleased to give, because the forage failed; and he frequently met large parties of young men, and even fathers of families, going to seek work on any terms in distant provinces.

To these people Felix Neff devoted himself.

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'It was not on Sunday only that he went the round of his churches, but he was ever visiting now one quarter, and then another; and happy did they esteem themselves at whose table he sat down, and under whose roof he lodged for the night. When his arrival was expected in certain hamlets, whose rotation to be visited was supposed to be coming round, it was beautiful to see the cottages send forth their inhabitants, to watch the coming of the beloved minister. Come, take your dinner with us"-"Let me prepare your supper"-" Permit me to give up my bed to you "—were re-echoed from many a voice, and though there was nothing in the repast which denoted a feast-day, yet never was festival observed with greater rejoicing than by those whose rye-bread and pottage were shared by the pastor. Sometimes, when the old people of one cabin were standing at their doors,

and

and straining their eyes to catch the first view of their "guide to heaven," the youngsters of another were perched on the summit of a rock, and stealing a prospect which would afford them an earlier sight of him, and give them the opportunity of offering the first invitation. It was on these occasions that he obtained a perfect knowledge of the people, questioning them about such of their domestic concerns as he might be supposed to take an interest in, as well as about their spiritual condition, and finding where he could be useful both as a secular adviser and a religious counsellor. "Could all their children read? Did they understand what they read? Did they offer up morning and evening prayers? Had they any wants that he could relieve? Any doubts that he could remove? Any afflictions wherein he could be a comforter?"

It was thus that he was the father of his flock, and master of their affections and their opinions; and when the seniors asked for his blessing, and the children took hold of his hands or his knees, he felt all the fatigue of his long journeys pass away, and became, recruited with new strength. But for the high and holy feelings which sustained him, it is impossible that he could have borne up against his numerous toils and exposures, even for the few months in which he thus put his constitution to the trial. Neither rugged paths, nor the inclement weather of these Alps, which would change suddenly from sunshine to rain, and from rain to sleet, and from sleet to snow: nor snow deep under foot, and obscuring the view when dangers lay thick on his road; nothing of this sort deterred him from setting out, with his staff in his hand, and his wallet on his back, when he imagined that his duty summoned him. I have been assured by those who have received him into their houses at such times, that he has come in chilly, wet, and fatigued, or exhausted by heat, and sudden transitions from excessive heat to piercing cold, and that, after sitting down a few minutes, his elastic spirits would seem to renovate his sinking frame, and he would enter into discourse with all the mental vigour of one who was neither weary nor languid.

'When he was not resident at the presbytery, he was the guest of some peasant, who found him willing to live as he lived; to make a scanty meal of soup-maigre, often without salt or bread, and to retire. to rest in the same apartment, where a numerous family were crowded together, amidst all the inconveniences of a dirty and smoky hovel.'pp. 213-215.

'You have come among us,' said an inhabitant of Mensas, ' like a woman who attempts to kindle a fire with green wood, She spends her breath in blowing it, to keep alive the little flame, but the moment she quits it, it goes out.' Lest it should indeed inevitably be thus, Neff endeavoured, as far as means and circumstances permitted, to follow Oberlin's example, for the character of Oberlin was his delight and his model. He taught the people of the upper hamlets that a way might be made to let the smoke out of their dwellings, and apertures for letting in the light and