President's Address. 13 



other races ; and I venture to believe that not the least valuable of 

 this foreign blood has come from Huguenot sources. 



Nor was it only that the refugees brought with them their 

 skill and their industry ; they brought with them that which was 

 far more valuable, their enlightened faith and their well-tested 

 piety. It was the saying of one of them — " Ne sommes point 

 venue de race illustre et noble. Sy est ce que nous sommes venue, 

 Dieu merci, des gens craig-nans Dieu." Our family, as we have 

 seen, owes its constitution to the fact that our ancestors feared 

 God rather than man ; moved by that fear they went forth and 

 found refuge in a foreign land. Nor is it undeserving of notice 

 that when, a century later, numberless emigres, priests and nobles, 

 escaping from the horrors of the Revolution, flocked to our shores 

 they received a ready welcome and substantial help from the 

 descendants of the Huguenots ; foremost amongst whom were 

 members of my ovvn family. " There can be no pleasure," writes 

 one of them, " equal to doing good, and particularly in assisting 

 the stranger." 



Nor is this all. When at the peace of 1814 the Emperors of 

 Austria and Eussia and the King of Prussia visited England, and 

 Louis XVIII. quitted it on his return to France, my mother's 

 father occupied a position which enabled him to open his house in 

 Dover to those great Potentates : the humble descendant of the 

 Hug'uenots thus overcoming evil with good, offering hospitality 

 to the long-banished descendant of their cruel persecutor. Some 

 funny stories of that "time of the Emperors," as it was called in 

 the family, have come down to us : as that of the Russian servants 

 drinking all the oil in the lamps, and leaving my grandfather's house 

 in darkness ; and that of the uncouth dress and strange language 

 of the Emperor Alexander's coachman nearly killing one of the 

 domestics with fright, in the belief that he was the embodiment of 

 Satan. 



Another fact may be mentioned in this connection, and one 

 not without some small historical interest. I had heard or read 

 that Louis XVIII. , when he embarked at Dover in 1814, was so 

 infirm that he had to be carried on board the yacht which was to 

 convey him to France. I asked my mother's sister. Miss Fector, 

 then a child of ten, whether this was the case She answered "No. 

 I was standing with my arm over the rail of the gangway when the 

 king walked down it. The Prince Regent came up the gangway 



