that England alone possessed "eleven
regiments composed entirely of these unhappy refugees, besides others
enrolled among the troops of the line. There were in London twenty
French churches supported by Government; about three thousand refugees
were maintained by public subscription; many received grants from the
crown; and a great number lived by their own industry.* Some of the
nobility were naturalized and obtained high rank; among others, Ruvigny,
son of the Marquis, was made Earl of Galway, and Schomberg received the
dignity of Duke."**

* Memoires et Observations faites par un Voyageur en
Angleterre, 12mo. La Haye, 1698, p. 362. Quoted by Browning
in his History of the Huguenots.

** Browning, [William Shergold]: History of the Huguenots.
London: Whittaker and Co. 1840. p. 256. Of the Refugees
from France, Hume says, "near fifty thousand passed over
into England;" and Voltaire writes that "one of the suburbs
of London was entirely peopled with French workers of silk."

[W. S. Browning was uncle to the poet, Robert Browning.
A. L., 1996.]

America, the new world, was naturally a land of refuge, and soon
received her share of these unhappy fugitives. The transition was easy
from England to her colonies. Every facility was afforded them for
transportation, and the wise policy which encouraged their settlement
in the new countries was amply rewarded by the results. Altogether,
the Huguenots were a much better sort of people than those who usually
constituted the mass of European emigrants. The very desperation of
their circumstances was a proof of their virtues. They were a people of
principle, for they had suffered everything for conscience sake. They
were a people of pure habits, for it was because of their religion
that they suffered banishment. In little patriarchal groups of sixty,
seventy, or eighty families, they made their way to different parts
of America; and with the conscious poverty of their own members, were
generally received with open arms by those whom they found in possession
of the soil. The English, as they beheld the dependent and destitute
condition of the fugitives, forgot, for a season, their usual national
animosities; and assigning ample tracts of land for their occupation,
beheld them, without displeasure, settling down in exclusive colonies,
in which they sought to maintain, as far as possible, the pious habits
and customs of the