Page:Memoirs of a Huguenot Family.djvu/110

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MEMOIRS OF A HUGUENOT FAMILY.

enemy whom they formerly scorned, and seen them driven from their intrenchments. and forced to precipitate themselves into the water, like the swine of the Gadarenes, in the fear of enemies who once dared not quit the shelter of their fenced cities to encounter them. The glory of Louis, called the Great, whose ambition aspired to universal monarchy, departed from him when he raised his hand against the people of God, and he lived to reap his reward in seeing himself despised in his old age, as he deserved to be. Famine[1] and poverty covered the face of the land. The gold and the silver disappeared, and their places were supplied by a species of enchanted paper, which perished before it was consumed, and still remains in portfolios, as a memento of what has been lost. Pestilence also has marched over that doomed and wretched land.

France! miserable France! my dear native country, wilt thou never open thine eyes, and unstop thine ears, and understand the language in which God has spoken to thee? Shall man say, I am stronger than my Maker: I have entirely destroyed the Reformation; I have disarmed the God who protected the Protestants; and I have caused a god of wafer to

  1. We have a more complete opportunity than our ancestors had of observing the consequences resulting from the cruel and impolitic conduct of Louis, and we conscientiously believe that the French nation is still suffering from it. In reading the history of France, and her revolutions, we often pause to think how different it might have been, if the descendants of the expatriated Huguenots had been scattered through the length and breadth of the land. They were generally of that middle class which constitutes the strength of a nation. They were emphatically the courageous and sober-minded; the moral, industrious, and the thinking portion of the community, as well as the truly pious. The descendants of such men, inheriting even in a moderate degree the traits of their fathers, might have had an influence of which we can form no idea in moderating the cruelty, the caprice, and the frivolity which have of late years characterized the acts of the French people.