had his recompense in the opportunities which he thus enjoyed of
preaching the gospel to the gendarmes by the way, and to the keepers of
the prisons, some of whom heard him gladly.

The departure of the Vaudois pastors threw the work into the hands of
the native converts, by whom it has been carried on ever since. It is to
be feared that, in the absence of pastors, not a little that is
political is mixed with the religious. It is difficult forming an
estimate of the numbers of the converts and inquirers. They have
meetings in all the towns of Tuscany and Lucca, between whom a constant
intercourse is maintained. Each member subscribes two crazzia a-week for
the purchase of Protestant religious books. To supply these books, two
presses are at work,--one in Turin, the other in Florence. The latter is
a secret press, which the police, with all their efforts, have not been
able to this day to discover. The Bible can be got into Tuscany with
great difficulty; yet the demand for it is greater than ever. The
converts have been tried by every mode of persecution short of death;
yet their numbers grow. The prisons are full with political and
religious offenders; yet fresh arrests continually take place in
Florence.

The first and more notable instance of persecution on which the
Government of Tuscany ventured, after the banishment of Count
Guicciardini and his companions, was the imprisonment of Francesco and
Rosa Madiai, for reading the Word of God in the Italian language. The
sufferings of these confessors turned out for the furtherance of the
Gospel. The attention of many of their own countrymen was drawn to the
cause of their sufferings; and the bigotry of the Grand Duke, or rather
of the Court of Rome, with which the Tuscan Government had entered into
a concordat for the suppression of heresy, was proclaimed before all
Europe. A Protestant deputation visited Florence to intercede in behalf
of these confessors; but their plea found so little favour with the
Grand Duke, that he immediately issued a decree, reviving an old law
which makes all offences against the religion of the State punishable
_by death_. To provide for carrying the decree into effect, a guillotine
was imported from Lucca, and an executioner was hired at a salary of ten
pounds a month. As if this were not sufficiently explicit, the Grand
Duke told his subjects that he was "_determined to root out
Protestantism from his State, though he should be handed down