which explores in order to benefit, will form plans for the relief of their descendants. Such a disposition to combine recollections of the past with objects that are present, in order to engage in future beneficial undertakings, is strictly consonant with reason. It has often stimulated the christian to greater progress in his course, and the student to new efforts in the career of science. Even a pagan could feel its influence, to some extent, and acknowledge that the splendid edifices of a city awakened in his mind less delight, than the names and the graves of the worthies who once adorned them by their presence,-" Movemur, nescio quo pacto (says Tully) locis ipsis, in quibus eorum, quos diligimus aut admiramur, adsunt vestigia. Me quidem ipsæ illæ nostræ Athenæ non tam operibus magnificis, exquisitisque antiquorum artibus delectant, quam recordatione summorum virorum, ubi quisque habitare, ubi sedere, ubi disputare solitus sit; studioseque eorum etiam sepulchra contemplor.* The propriety of the same sentiment-not as a romantic feeling, but as a rational and powerful incentive to the miud,-is equally * Cicero de Legib. l. ii. c. 2. * admitted by a late eloquent author, who, in allusion to the island of Iona, one of the Hebrides, as an island" which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion," observes, "To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible, if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish, if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends be such frigid philosophy, as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force on the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona."-May we not add, or in the valleys of Luzerna, Perosa, and San Martino? * Dr. Samuel Johnson. PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. DURING the time that Napoleon usurped dominion over Italy, Cardinal Pacca having excited his displeasure, that prelate was confined as a state-prisoner in the fortress of Fenestrelle; situate within a few miles of Pomaret, the residence of the late moderator. The cardinal appears to have been anxious, during his imprisonment, to obtain correct information respecting the history and tenets of so remarkable a body of christians as the Waldenses; and a short correspondence seems, (from expressions in the first page of the following letters), to have taken place between himself and the moderator; the statements in which not being deemed satisfactory by that prelate, the moderator undertakes, in the following letters, a regular historical defence of the ancient body of christians over which he presided. They contain numerous and minute details, interwoven with the tenor of his argument; whilst that argument |