nothing can be more undeniable than that the tale of a dead man is a "tale that is told."

The oppressions which are now inflicted upon the Vaudois, by the Sardinian government and the Catholic church, are most absurd and vexatious. At San Giovanni, opposite to the Protestant church (which is a large and handsome edifice, and accommodates a congregation of more than seventeen hundred persons) is situated a Catholic chapel, at which divine worship is celebrated by a congregation which never exceeds the number of forty. Before the great door of the Protestant church there is erected a high wooden screen, or palisade, which gives to the church the appearance of an unfinished building. "This unsightly wood-work," says Mr. G., "was erected that the pious Catholics of San Giovanni might not be shocked at seeing their heretical neighbours enter their place of worship, or house of abomination."-And it is a degrading fact, that the Sardinian government, when, after the intervention of the ambassadors of the Protestant States, it reluctantly consented to allow this church to be re-opened in 1814, insisted on the humiliating and ridiculous condition of raising this ugly screen.

Another manifestation of the same pitiful spirit appears at La Torre, where the Protestants are compelled to build a partition on the outside of the village school, to prevent the few straggling Catholics who may occasionally appear in the street, from having their ears offended by hearing the infant heretics repeating their lessons.

There are, unfortunately, other oppressions of a more serious nature. No Protestant is allowed to purchase lands beyond the narrow boundaries of the three vallies. No Vaudois is allowed to practise as a physician, surgeon, apothecary, advocate, or attorney, except among his own community, and within the limits of the vallies. No Protestant books of instruction or devotion are allowed to be printed in Piemont; and an enormous duty is laid upon the importation of such books. They are obliged to abstain from work on all the festivals of the Romish church.-They pay a land-tax of twenty and a half per cent, whereas the Catholics pay only thirteen per cent! No Vaudois clergyman is allowed to sleep in any village except those immediately adjoining his own community! These are not mere formal restrictions, where the strict letter of the law is, in practice, softened by a liberal interpretation. A poor clergyman, who went to visit one of his flock who had been taken ill at Bricherasio, was prevented from returning at night within the prescribed limits by a snow storm; in order to avoid the penalties imposed by the laws, he was compelled to sit up

all night, that he might be able to swear that he did not sleep at Bricherasio. Such is the generosity, toleration, and Christian spirit of the Roman Catholic in power.

These heavy and multiplied vexations are practised through the absurd jealousy of the Catholic church against a most simple and unoffending people. Even their bitterest enemies have often been compelled to praise the virtues of the Vandois. The late dean of Carlisle, in his Ecclesiastical History, mentions that this was said of them by a fiery and persecuting Dominican monk; "I allow, in morals and life, they are good; true in words, and unanimous in brotherly love, but their faith is incorrigible." Another of their persecutors said, in a moment of remorse, that he would to God he were as good a Christian as the worst of them.

In these times we hope we need not dread the renewal of those deeds of blood and of violence by which the church of Rome has so often, without provocation, endeavoured to root out the Protestants of the valleys. Yet they are at this very day subjected to trials, and sufferings, from which they ought to be relieved. It concerns the hononr of every Protestant State to contribute to their assistance; but with us it comes in a stricter shape it is a debt! A contribution to the amount of 38,000l. was made in England, on hearing of the horrid sufferings of the Vaudois in 1655. Milton was the great summoner to this benefaction. A portion of it was expended at the time in providing for the unfortunate people who had been burnt out of their homes, pillaged, and persecuted in all conceiveable modes of cruelty. 16,000l. remained, which was put out to interest, by a commission, for the purpose of forming a permanent fund for the maintenance of the Vaudois pastors, &c. This fund was sequestrated by that wretched profligate, Charles the 2nd, on the pretence, 'that he was not bound to fulfil the engagements of an usurper!' William made a new allowance, which was continued until the French conquest of Italy, when it was withheld. Napoleon directed that each minister should receive 1200 francs a year. This again was withheld on the restoration of the Sardinian government, which, being grateful to God, and just to man, and eminently Catholic besides, swept away the whole maintenance of the Vaudois clergy at once. The remonstrances of the Belgian and Prussian envoys, however, extracted from this liberal and tolerant dynasty, a rate of 500 francs, or twenty pounds a year for those luckless pastors. Other contributions have been added from foreign governments: but the total does not raise the highest income above forty-two pounds a year; and upon this miser

able and precarious stipend, men are expected to go through, in their age and infirmity, a series of labours that might task the most vigorous frame, to rear their families, and to provide for a succession of pastors in the church. This state of affairs cannot last; the true faith will not perish from the world, but it will seek some more congenial hold than the rugged and wintry vallies of the Waldenses. The church has already dwindled down there: beggary may not break the spirit of the generation who have already taken upon themselves the charge of the Faith, but it cuts off the succession; it compels the new race to look to other sources of support, and delivers over the church to ignorance and extinction.

The governments of Russia, of Prussia, of the Netherlands, and of Switzerland, have each contributed, and do now contribute, towards the very inadequate funds out of which the poor clergymen of the vallies are maintained. Towards that particular purpose the British government has not contributed one shilling since the year 1797. Now that the reasons for withholding it have ceased, it will no doubt be restored. But the case is urgent, and it must not be long delayed.

Their clergy, for many years, since the destruction of their own ancient college at Angrogna, have been educated at Geneva or Lausanne. This, which ought never to have been, is, we trust, to be so no longer; for means are now taking to have the old college of Angrogna re-established.

As Mr. Gilly's tour was chiefly through the high-road of Europe, nothing very novel could be expected from his views; but he should avoid in future the affectations which seem so easily to beset a young writer in sight of the Alps, and in the sound of the Romish worship. To touch on minor matters; we are not quite assured of the sincerity of that lofty disdain with which he declares his alarm at English degeneracy abroad. We may grieve responsive to his sorrows that the ten thousand of his countrymen in Paris were not all present in the Embassador's chapel, which is crowded with five hundred! But that he should have been invited to partake of the abominations of tea and coffee on a Sunday evening, (or a Sabbath, as he piously and improperly calls it,) is still more afflicting. Yet if his frail nature betrayed him into Society, he handsomely atones for his offence, by sneering at the hospitality which kindly and confidentially opened its doors to him, and saved him from the inevitable stupidity of a stranger's evening at home, or perhaps even from the severe necessity of going to a Sunday play; for to such extremities will even the pious among tourists be occasionally driven. We, however, are strongly inclined, from cir

cumstances, to believe that this horror was altogether an afterthought; that the young divine performed his part in the conversazione with remarkable festivity,-and that it was not till he had gravitated into the Author, that it occurred to him to exult over his entertainers, and bless himself that "he was not as others, even as those publicans.

With this remark, which we make reluctantly, but with a very perfect sense of its being Mr. Gilly's due, we take our leave of him. His quarto is not new, for the material of his history and his descriptions has been anticipated in a hundred publications, some within a year or two of his own. But he has had the merit of throwing the subject into a new form, and of once again laying before the English public a singular and melancholy case, which it will be to the honour of this nation and religion to relieve. In this charity it is the duty of all Protestant nations to concur. The government of Sardinia itself, blind and bigotted as it appears, may, in time, adopt a more rational and Christian course towards these its most loyal, most oppressed, and most patient subjects. It is a great deal to have abandoned persecution; and the descendants of those who laid waste the habitations of the Vallies, may yet, like the Jews of old, build up the tombs of the prophets whom their fathers had slain.

Elements of Physiology. By A. RICHERAND, Professor of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, Member of the Academy of Vienna,&c. Translated from the French by G.Z.M. De Lys, M.D. Fourth Edition, with Notes and a copious Appendix, by James Copland, M. D. Lecturer on Physiology, Pathology and Therapeutics, Consulting Physician to Queen Charlotte's Lying-in-Hospital, Physician to the Universal Infirmary for Children, Member of the Royal College of Physicians, London, &c. &c. 8vo. Pp. 704. London. Longman, &c. 1824.

PHYSIOLOGY, or biology, as it has been more correctly termed, is, at the present day, perhaps more widely studied than any other branch of physical knowledge. But it is to professional inquirers chiefly that we are indebted for its very considerable advance in modern times. Physiological science is now studied with increasing ardour: its progress has, consequently, been equally great; and a diffusion of its knowledge amongst the well-informed part of the community is the general result,

VOL. II. NO. V.

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M. Richerand's work is well known. The translation of it now before us appeared in 1812. Three large editions have been published since, but each of these was merely a reprint of the former. For their deficiencies very ample amends are made in the present edition. Dr. Copland, its learned editor, has given, in foot notes, distributed throughout the body of the work, and in an appendix of nearly two hundred closely printed pages, a valuable digest of the various new facts and opinions in physiology since the date of the French edition, accompanying them with the results of his own researches. These latter are, in our opinion, the most interesting parts of his copious annotations. His remarks are ingenious, and his views frequently profound. But, we think some of his speculations too abstracted and refined, for many of those for whom the work is intended. Such of its readers as are not intimately acquainted with physiological disquisitions, will require to study attentively the body of the work before they can be enabled to comprehend the full relations of some of his opinions; yet even these are not the least calculated to interest and to please those who are much engaged in the inquiries to which they relate.

The first chapter of the Appendix is on life. Dr. Copland's observations on this much-disputed topic are well deserving of an attentive perusal. We extract the passage in which he combats the doctrine that life is the result of organization:

"Those who contend that life is the result of organization, ought to explain in what manner the organization itself took place; they should shew the means employed to produce the disposition of parts, which they conceive requisite to give rise to vital phenomena. If they deny the primary influence of a vital power, associated with the particles of matter, let them explain by what other agency the different atoms can assume organic actions. All effects must have a cause, and it is better to assign one according to which difficulties may be accounted for, than to contend for the efficiency of " properties" or "powers," of the existence of which we have no evidence, and which, even granting them to exist, can only be considered as inferior agents, or certain manifestations of a vital principle.

"With respect to this class of physiologists, it may be remarked generally;-1st. That explanations of organization, which admit not of the primary and controuling influence of vitality, however applicable they may seem to those who look only at the gross relations of things, cannot satisfactorily account for the origin and nature of the phenomena to which they relate; for, however terms may be substituted, or illustrations multiplied, the changes which continually take place in living bodies cannot be explained by means of the laws and affinities which characterize the combinations of inorganized matter.