air; chimneys and windows being luxuries to which few of them had aspired. He convinced them that warmth might be obtained in the winter more healthily, and not less comfortably, than by pigging together for six or seven months in stables, from which the muck of the cattle was removed but once during the year.' He taught them a mode of tillage by which they increased the quantity of their produce. The potatoe they had indeed before he went among them, but they cultivated it so wretchedly that the produce was the least possible, and the quality lamentably bad; for they set it so close that there was no room for growth or expansion, or for weeding the ground. It was in vain that he advised them to set at proper distances; proceeding therefore in that decided way which Oberlin's example had taught him to pursue, he went through the valley when this business was in hand, and going out to the fields or gardens when they were setting their potatoes, took the spade from the labourer, and set two or three rows himself. This was not permitted without great reluctance, and many, as soon as his back was turned, reset them after their own fashion; but a few let them remain, and in the ensuing year there was not one but was ready to follow the pastor's method; and the potatoe is now one of the most valuable productions of a soil which yields but a scanty return at the

most.'

He

Breeding cattle is one of the principal resources of the valley of Fressinière, but a dry summer often left the people unprovided with hay. Here Neff's engineering studies became of use. saw that, by a proper direction of some of those streams, which in the Alps never fail, the grass in many places might at any time be irrigated; but when he represented to his parishioners that the water might be made to rise and fall, and dammed and distributed as it was wanted, it was neither easy to persuade them of this, nor to make them encounter what they thought a ruinous expense and an insuperable labour. When first he seriously proposed to them to construct the necessary canals, they absolutely refused; and in the bitterness of disappointed benevolence, he told them that they were equally deaf to temporal and spiritual counsel. Pointing to the torrents which ran to waste, he exclaimed, You make as little use of these ample streams as you do of the water of life! God has vouchsafed to offer you both in abundance; but your pastures, like your hearts, are languishing with drought!' In the spring of 1825 there had been so little snow, that there was every reason to expect the grass would fail, the soil not having received its wonted supply of moisture. Neff then renewed the proposal, urging how needful at this time it evidently was. objection was not now to the impossibility or the cost of the under

The

taking,

taking, but to its durability, and to the jarring interests which it might call forth. The canal and aqueducts, if made, would soon get out of order. If one proprietor were willing, another might not be so. One neighbour might refuse to let the trench cross his land, and thus stop the whole proceeding; but if all agreed, and the work were happily completed, an avalanche, or the descent of a crag, would soon destroy it, and leave them as they were before. To this Neff replied, that nothing was safe from avalanches, and on that score they might just as reasonably refuse to plant or sow, and to build houses. He then addressed them separately, upon whom collectively it was hopeless to prevail :-Will you consent if your neighbour will? Personal appeals are not so easily resisted; and he gradually obtained in this way an unwilling acquiescence. But then a selfish difficulty was started—Will the distribution be equal? Will not my neighbour get more of the water than I shall? How do I know that he will not exhaust the supply before my land has had a drop? In reply to this, Neff proposed, that there should be a committee and an arbiter to determine what share of the public benefit each occupier should enjoy, and how long, and on what days, and at what hours, the stream should be permitted to pour its waters into the different sections and branches of its course.'

All consents were at last obtained, all preliminaries settled, and the line was marked out; but then the people would only labour at that part which was to irrigate their own grounds. Men will not be found more generous in proportion as they are removed from civilization, but they are more easily made ashamed of selfishness; for no one in this ruder state thinks of justifying it as a commendable principle of action; our good instincts must be corrupted by the vices of society before we can practise that deadly delusion upon ourselves. ourselves. Neff saw that this was not a resolution to be maintained if he conld once get them fairly engaged. Be it so, said he; only let us make a beginning! Accordingly at daybreak the working-party, consisting of forty, met, with the pastor at their head. They proceeded to examine the remains of an ancient aqueduct, (a proof that these valleys had once been possessed by a more industrious or more intelligent generation,) and make out its line, which would, it was thought, be useful, if this could be done so far as to follow its direction. But only few traces were discernible, and the sight seemed to dishearten men whom Mr. Gilly aptly demonstrates conscripts rather than volunteers. We shall be three days,' said one, before we can complete this part of the work!' It will take us not less than six,' said another.' 'Ten,' said a third. 'Not quite so many, said the pastor, mildly, and with a benevolent smile.' To work they went,

6

in detachments of five or six-Neff allotting a distinct portion of labour to each, and taking upon himself the direction in chief; sometimes plying his pickaxe himself, at others hovering from place to place to superintend all. About ten o'clock they proposed to go home to breakfast; but Neff could not trust them out of sight of each other, and of himself; he sent for his own breakfast, continued at his work, and persuaded the rest to do the same.

'It was a toilsome undertaking. In some places they had to elevate the floor of the main channel to the height of eight feet, and in others to lower it as much. In the course of the first day's labour, it was necessary to carry the construction across the rocky beds of three or four torrents, and often when the work appeared to be effectually done, Neff detected a default in the level, or in the inclination of the water course, which obliged him to insist upon their going over it again. At four o'clock the volunteers were rewarded by seeing the first fruits of their labours: one line of aqueduct was completed; the dam was raised, and the water rushed into the nearest meadow amidst the joyful shouts of workmen and spectators. The next day some cross cuts were made, and proprietors, who were supposed to be secretly hostile and incredulous, saw the works carried over their ground without offering any opposition to the measure, for who could indulge his obstinate or dogged humour, when the benevolent stranger, the warm-hearted minister, was toiling in the sweat of his brow to achieve a public good, which never could be of the least advantage to himself? It was the good shepherd, not taking the fleece, but exhausting his own strength, and wearing himself out for the sheep. On the third, and the following days, small transverse lines were formed, and a long channel was made across the face of the mountain, to supply three village fountains with water. This last was a very formidable enterprise. It was necessary to undermine the rock, to blast it, and to construct a passage for the stream in granite of the very hardest kind. “I had never done any thing like it before," is the pastor's note upon this achievement, "but it was necessary to assume an air of scientific confidence, and to give my orders like an experienced engineer."

The work was brought to a most prosperous issue, and the pastor was thenceforward a sovereign, who reigned so triumphantly and absolutely, that his word was law.'-pp. 238-240.

The favourite scene of his labours, Val Fressinière, is probably the most uncivilized spot in the French dominions. Neff found its inhabitants nearly in the same barbarous state that Thuanus has described, when he spoke of that valley as the most wild and repulsive in the whole region, and the people as having no linen in use, either for their garments or their beds, and sleeping in the clothes which they wore during the day, living in the same hovels with their cattle, and so offensive to the smell, that strangers could scarcely bear to be within scent of them. This the historian im

F 2

puted

puted to the filthy manner in which they fed upon the produce of the chase-the chamois and the bear. But uncouth and squalid as they were, he said they were very far from being uncultivated in their morals; almost all of them could write, understood Latin, and as much French as sufficed for reading the Bible, and for singing psalms. In the course of two centuries they were so far improved that they wore woollen instead of being clothed in sheep skins; but in their intellectual culture they had retrograded in at least an equal degree. They had as little knowledge of Latin as they had use for it, and there was scarcely one in the whole valley who could read French with any tolerable fluency, much less speak it; indeed, before Neff could teach them, it was necessary that he should make himself thoroughly master of their patois. To this condition persecution had reduced them. They had been hunted like wild beasts during the dog-days of Roman Catholic ascendancy, when their nearest neighbours, the inhabitants of Val Louise, had been exterminated, and those of Val Queyras had only escaped extermination by conforming outwardly to the religion of the persecuting church. There is nothing more atrocious in the history of that church than its relentless persecution of the primitive Christians (for so they may with sufficient propriety be called) of the Alpine countries. He who with an honest mind examines the copious accounts which have been given of the religious wars in France, would be disposed (if St. Bartholomew could be forgotten) to doubt on which side the greatest excesses were committed. The impassible Montluc (who, if he had lived in our days, would have been a marshal after Buonaparte's own heart, and whose memoirs are one of the most characteristic books in any language)-he gives a dreadful account of the Huguenots, which may be believed, because he gives a hideous one of his own proceedings against them. Je sçavois bien, said he, que si je tombois entre leurs mains et à leur discrétion, la plus grande piece de mon corps n'eust pas esté plus grande qu'un des doigts de And so he determined to sell his skin dear. But the Alpine Christians were an inoffensive race, who desired nothing more than to worship God after the manner of their fathers, and would fain have been in charity with all.

ma main.

That they should have preserved their primitive faith in its purity after the Revocation (as most certainly they did preserve it), is a fact not more consolatory than it is remarkable for during a full hundred years they were deprived of all the ordinances of religion, except when, at long intervals, and at the hazard of his life, which, if he had been taken, would have been forfeited, some Vaudois pastor came over the mountains to administer them. The want of a resident pastor, and consequently of any one who could

keep

keep up among them their little stock of learning, sufficiently accounts for its total loss. The moral elevation of character which still existed-though like latent heat-was produced mainly by the pride of their religious ancestry (if so equivocal a word as pride may here be permitted); and it was favoured by the very circumstance of the language which at first impeded Neff in his endeavours to communicate instruction. To those who understand the patois,' says Mr. Gilly, or to whom it is accurately translated as it was to me, the poetical and elegant turn which is given to conversation by the constant use of figures and metaphors derived from mountain scenery, and from the accidents and exposure of Alpine life, enhance the pleasure, and send the traveller home well satisfied with his excursion.' Neff says, that the plaintive expressions and affecting rhythmical apostrophes which are peculiar to this patois, cannot be translated into French: 'the French language is not rich enough to bear the transfusion.' One of these mountaineers was speaking to Neff of a pastor who had formerly visited them, and of his last address, in which he told them that they would see his face no more: it seemed, said the relater, as if a gust of wind had blown out the torch which was to light us in our passage by night across the precipice.

66

• At the funeral of a young woman who died suddenly on her way from one church service to another, her mother, when the body was placed upon the bier, after repeating the prayers, exclaimed, “ Alas! my poor child had not time to utter these words! death has seized her, as the eagle snatches up the lamb, as the rock falls and crushes the timid kid of the chamois. Oh, my dear Mary, the Lord has taken thee at the very gate of his temple. Thy last thoughts were, therefore, we may hope, directed towards Him. Oh may He have made thy peace before the throne of God, and receive thee in paradise! How often, said one of Neff's guides and catechumens, when they were passing a defile,—how often have I braved danger in following the wild goat among these precipices! I spared neither my time nor trouble; I endured cold, hunger, and fatigue; I traversed the most frightful rocks, and exposed my life hundreds of times. Shall I do as much for Jesus? Shall I pursue eternal life with as much ardour?'

These are thoughts which might be expressed in any language, but which are most likely to suggest themselves where the language is suited for expressing them, and just in proportion as the dialect of these mountaineers partakes more of the Provençal than of the French, is it better adapted for the utterance of such feelings in figurative speech. There are no two nations in which the effect of language upon national character is more strikingly seen than in the French and English. It is impossible that there should be a French Shakspeare or a French Milton; and nearly so, let us hope, that there should be an English Voltaire.

Neff,