Hogarth has immortalised in his picture of "Noon," the worthy 'descendants of those heroic confessors, who, flying to this 'country from the wrath of Louis XIV., and his dragoons, kept alive the flame of pure religion in the sheltering obscurities ' of Hog Lane and the Seven Dials.'

The reason which brought down these satirical attacks upon the heads of the French denizens in London is plain enough, and one of no rare occurrence in any society. The less worthy among them always made the greatest noise, and London was the place where the noise echoed the loudest. It is not to be supposed that the emigration had been exclusively confined to devout and upright Protestants. There was, as in every assemblage of men, a mixture of good and bad. Most of them certainly had obeyed the earnest cry of their conscience, but others had followed, who yielded rather to the first burst of their indignation, or to the mere influence of example; others who wanted excitement more than repose; others who brought with them rather the general manners of their nation than the characteristic habits of their Church. In à sermon preached at the French chapel of the Savoy, on the death of Queen Mary, the minister, Jean Dubourdieu, spoke of that extraordinary contradiction at which he wondered in the conduct of the profane refugees,' unable to practise the religion for which they had been able to suffer.

Then adventurers came whose extravagance and malice contributed very much to give an unfavourable hue to the French colony, though the great body of it had no share in their misdeeds. From 1706 to 1708 a public scandal was raised in London by three Camisards*, who drove a sort of trade with their supposed gift of inspiration, and made public exhibitions of their prophetical spirit. The mania of prophesying had been one of the most active elements of the religious war in the Cevennes, and when the rebellion was abated, these three men who had happily escaped, and one of whom, Elias Marion, had even, like Cavalier, obtained a regular capitulation from the royal commanders, were called to England. Whether they

were partners in some pecuniary speculation upon public credulity, or instruments in one of the many plots which were then formed in England and Holland against the French government, or both together, is not easy to determine. But they were at first very successful in their mysterious business.

It was the name under which the mountaineers of the Cevennes were commonly designated during the Rebellion. Different etymo. logies were already suggested for that word in the time of Cavalier.

Their novelty, their seeming ecstacies, their convulsions, brought people to see them as to a play. Coaches were frequently at their doors, they were sent for to rich houses, and for the blessings which they gave, offerings were tendered to them. They were even joined by a baronet, Sir Richard Bulkeley, and by several gentlemen of the bar, among whom was John Lacy, who vied with Marion in ridiculous audacity. Their prophetical warnings were written down as soon as uttered in the middle of their fits, and printed for the general edification. Many followed the same course, and in Bristol, Birmingham, Glasgow, as well as in London, English prophets and prophetesses entered into competition with the French. A vehement controversy arose upon the matter; pamphlets were published, sermons preached against the enthusiastic impostors.'

Their enthusiasm had indeed assumed a more dangerous form than ordinary delusions of religious fanaticism. Their ranting led to more practical conclusions than the declamations about Babylon and Antichrist. From general harangues against Babylon, they came in a little time to declaim against crowns and churches, against the tyranny of the priesthood and all subordination. Babylon and Antichrist were always artfully introduced upon the stage, and people were at liberty to believe that they meant Rome and her pope; but, in fact, by the help of these two words taken in a new sense, the prophets said whatever they pleased against the order of society, as 'Babylon and Antichrist were to be found everywhere.' After having railed at the ministers of the Established Church as much as they wanted to set the rabble at them,' they went on against the rich with their levelling principle, and here we have the old English saying repeated again after so many centuries:

'When Adam delved and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman?'

The prophetical warnings of Marion are full of demagogical declamations against England and her laws, and under the transparent veil of the Eastern imagery, borrowed from the sacred language of the Hebrew prophets, he constantly threatens plunder, murder, and destruction: My child, I have something to tell thee: I am going to put an end and to release all the galley slaves of the earth; the chains are going to fall off within a few days; an universal liberty is coming into my house; there shall be no more slaves, no more labourers at the oar; there shall be an entire liberty. . I am going within a few days, I tell thee, to set this city on fire.

I will pull down these lofty crowns which are exalted up to 'heaven; I come to throw them down into hell.'

At last this alarming appearance merged in the ludicrous, and Lacy having been rash enough to announce that he would raise a dead man from his grave on a certain day, his failure was the end of all. The French churches of London had passed a severe sentence upon the Camisards and their fraudulent or foolish fanaticism, both,' it was said, 'to prevent the reproach which those of the Romish communion might cast upon us, and to testify to the nation in whose bosom we have the happiness to live, that we have done what lay in our power to prevent this great scandal.' Many among the refugees, apprehending that the ill-omened predictions of their fanatical countrymen might bring all the nation into the displeasure of the English among whom they lived,' resolved to disturb their meetings, and by treating them with open contempt, to show clearly their own abhorrence of such practices. But though they had been excommunicated by the French consistories, and driven out of their assemblies by French mobs, they were nevertheless constantly styled the French prophets,' and remained in the public memory with that denomination, the discredit of which could not but fall more or less upon the entire colony. French prophets were soon appropriate subjects for popular comic songs. Tom D'Urfey, born himself from parents who had left La Rochelle to fly to England, wrote a farce, the heroes of which were the modern prophets; and Swift did not forget them in the predictions of Isaac Bickerstaff, which had been composed to prevent the people of England from being farther imposed on by vulgar almanac-makers.'

Next to these enterprising wanderers there was also an unceasingly moving set of intriguers, conspirers, and secret political agents, such as the Marquis de Guiscard, who, to revenge the disappointment of his insane ambition, attempted to stab Mr. Harley at a sitting of the council where he was to be examined upon his suspected treason. He had never been a Protestant, and he carried on his plans of civil war in France rather upon feudal notions than according to the ideas of his own time. But he was among the French pensioned by the English Government; and we need only read the contemporary narratives of his crime, to see how eagerly the opportunity was seized for making his countrymen favoured with the same bounty appear in an invidious light.

Last of all, the refugees themselves injured their own cause by interfering too much in the politics of their new country, and not observing the neutrality becoming settlers so recently natural

ised. It was natural that they should take part with the Whigs against the Tories, when they saw the Tories rallying round the standard of Sacheverell, and plotting against the Protestant Succession, the best security of the refugees in England. But there were preachers in the French colony who proved as intemperate supporters of the right of revolutionary resistance as Dr. Sacheverell of the duty of passive obedience. In 1710, when new members were to be elected for Westminster, in 1712, when the Duke of Marlborough was definitively dismissed from the Queen's favour, many of them did not conceal their bitter opposition to the Court. Moreover they quarrelled much among themselves upon the matter, as some did not approve of so much party spirit. The contest was kept up for years in a flow of libels, the French authors of which did not abstain from ridiculing one another. There we find pictures which look much like the portraits drawn by Addison and Hogarth, with such descriptions of club and coffee-house life that they seem to spend their whole time in places of public resort and amusement. We cannot help deriving the same impression from another contest which raged still later between the French Protestant consistories in London and the poor French converts of the Church of Rome being in holy orders.' After a long struggle the priests and monks who had passed from the Catholic to the Anglican Church had been admitted to partake of the royal bounty distributed since 1687 to the refugees. They were excluded in 1729, upon a representation to the Crown that many worthless and immoral persons came from France on purpose to have 'their share of the money.' This money was under the care of a French lay committee, the members of which were constantly exposed to the attacks of every one who deemed himself injured in the distribution of the fund. Such imputations must not be lightly credited; but they might at the time derive some countenance from books published by Malard or Dennis in 1720 and 1722, with titles such as this: The spirit of the French Refugees manifested, . . . . wherein is set forth the insolence and ingratitude of the French Refugees towards the English, 'their benefactors; their domineering spirit and wickedness to'wards the unhappy converts their countrymen; their fanatical discipline; their open endeavours to obstruct the glory of God, to engross to themselves his spiritual and universal king'dom, &c.'

Nothing, however, would be more unfair than to judge the whole of the French Protestant settlement in England from these few examples of eccentric conduct. The common life of the great majority was less conspicuous and more regular. It

was only by steadily applying to the daily duties of their respective callings, that they were enabled to improve their circumstances, and to rise superior to popular prejudice. Many of the French Refugees made good fortunes in trade, and became the founders of families which still subsist among us. We subjoin an interesting description of the earnest and amiable character which was attributed in the middle of the last century, to the French Protestants of Ireland by a credible witness, Philip Skelton, the rector of Fintona. He was born and bred in the vicinity of the French colony of Lisburn. When new cruelties practised in 1751, by the Comte de Saint Priest, upon the Protestants of Languedoc, drove a fresh supply of refugees to Ireland, he tried to conciliate public sympathy in their favour, by writing an eulogistic account of the former settlers.

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'I can boldly appeal,' says Skelton, to the experience of every one who knows them, whether, in point of private or civil and 'social virtue, they have not all along so behaved themselves as 'to deserve our love, our esteem and confidence. As to their 'private virtues, are they not sober, modest, industrious, and honest? Let us recollect how few instances since the last revolution, of vile or profligate persons have been found among them 'throughout the nation. They do not profane God's name or his sabbath, they do not drink, debauch or game; they do not ' quarrel or break the peace like other men; they never meddle 'with other people's affairs, but when they are called, and then 6 they show themselves to be the men of integrity and humanity. 'They do not overbear nor affect parade like their popish countrymen, but confine themselves to their own business, which, in the midst of a truly Christian simplicity of manners, they 'pursue with admirable address and skill to the great advantage 'not only of themselves, but of the nation in general. The 'management of their gardens, houses, and tables affords us an useful example of neatness and good economy, and teaches us to live better than we otherwise could have done and at less expense. Their natural complaisance may help to polish our 'too great plainness, and that perpetual vivacity for which they are remarkable, may serve to temper the gloomy or melancholy "turn of mind we complain so much of in ourselves.'

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If from this general representation of the manners of the French Protestants in their adoptive country, we pass to their private annals, we find a gentleness and composure of domestic life, such, for instance, as appears in the Memoirs of Sir Samuel Romilly. The touching pages which Romilly, in the narrative of his early years, has dedicated to the remembrance of his father's small house at Marylebone; the recollections of the