lames. The Huguenot landed proprietors, the principal
manufacturers, the best of the artisans, had left for other countries.
Protestantism was now entirely without leaders. The very existence of
Protestantism in any form was denied by the law; and it might perhaps
reasonably have been expected that, being thus crushed out of sight,
it would die.

But there still remained another important and vital element--the
common people--the peasants, the small farmers, the artisans, and
labouring classes--persons of slender means, for the most part too
poor to emigrate, and who remained, as it were, rooted to the soil on
which they had been born. This was especially the case in the
Cevennes, where, in many of the communes, almost the entire
inhabitants were Protestants; in others, they formed a large
proportion of the population; while in all the larger towns and
villages they were very numerous, as well as widely spread over the
whole province.

* * * * *

The mountainous district of the Cevennes is the most rugged, broken,
and elevated region in the South of France. It fills the department of
Lozere, as well as the greater part of Gard and Herault. The principal
mountain-chain, about a hundred leagues in length, runs from
north-east to south-west, and may almost be said to unite the Alps
with the Pyrenees. From the centre of France the surface rises with a
gradual slope, forming an inclined plane, which reaches its greatest
height in the Cevennic chain, several of the summits of which are
about five thousand five hundred feet above the sea level. Its
connection with the Alpine range is, however, broken abruptly by the
deep valley of the Rhone, running nearly due north and south.

The whole of this mountain district maybe regarded as a triangular
plateau rising gradually from the northwest, and tilted up at its
south-eastern angle. It is composed for the most part of granite,
overlapped by strata belonging to the Jurassic-system; and in many
places, especially in Auvergne, the granitic rocks have been burst
through by volcanoes, long since extinct, which rise like enormous
protuberances from the higher parts of the platform. Towards the
southern border of the district, the limestone strata overlapping the
granite assume a remarkable development, exhibiting a series of
flat-topped hills bounded by perpendicular cliffs some six or eight
hundred feet high.

"These plateaux," says Mr. Scrope, in