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Contribution to tje Jiefanontm 

 Jfnnfr in 1655. 



By J. Waylen. 



T is not many months since a remarkable gathering* took 

 place in Torre Pellice, the capital of the Waldensian valleys 

 lying in the midst of the Cottian Alps, in the north of Italy, thirty 

 miles, more or less, from Turin. The object of the meeting was to 

 commemorate what has long been termed the "Glorious Return " 

 of the expatriated Waldenses just two hundred years ago ; when 

 eight hundred resolute men, gathering on the shore of the Lake of 

 Geneva from the various scenes of their exile, fought their way back 

 to their beloved homes in the face of terrible hardships and the 

 opposition of French soldiery. At the bi-centenary celebration of 

 that event which came off in September, 1889, not only were 

 delegates present from many Protestant lands, but the King of 

 Italy expressed his personal sympathy by addressing an affectionate 

 letter to his Waldensian subjects, by commanding the Prefect of 

 Turin to attend the conclave as His Majesty's representative, by a 

 donation of five thousand francs, and by knighting the Rev. J. P. 

 Pons — the " Moderator of the Table/'' as he was termed — and 

 investing him with the order of the Corona d'ltalia. Among the 

 English visitors the venerable figure of Sir Henry Layard, the 

 explorer of Nineveh, was conspicuous, himself a descendant of 

 French Huguenots. 



But a narrative of the Glorious Return of 1689, how attractive 

 soever it might prove, is not so much the object of the present 

 article as to accept it as a suitable occasion for reviving the memory 

 of what took place in our own country, and in our own county of 

 Wilts too, when the Waldenses underwent the previous catastrophe 

 of the massacre of 1655. These two events in fact constitute the 

 two most prominent epochs in their history as a suffering Church. 

 They had been a proscribed race all down the centuries ; but the 

 tragedy of 1655 was of so desolating a character as to awaken the 

 horror of all the Protestant states of Europe. John Milton's well- 

 known sonnet on the occasion by no means exaggerates the affair. 



