I shall next beg of the Committee to pass on with me from France to _Italy_. To the northern parts of this country, however, my visit was alone extended; and there I found the same obstacles to exist against the free circulation of the word of God, of which other travellers have complained. One exception however may be stated, and that with regard to a people whose cause has excited a warm and most honourable interest in this country—the Protestant inhabitants of Piedmont. They, in common with the other Protestant subjects of the King of Sardinia, are now permitted to receive books of every kind, on payment of duty, and, on the condition that they are neither sold, lent, nor given to Catholics. This concession came at a time of peculiar importance; as it facilitated the introduction of the large grant of Bibles lately made by this society to the Protestant inhabitants of the vallies. And I learned from the principal agent of the Bible Society in those quarters, that they had received nearly 5000 {6} Bibles and Testaments from different institutions. These grants are of greater value at this moment, when the Vaudois Committee in London is so wisely and assiduously labouring to establish schools of various kinds in these vallies. I am requested to present the cordial thanks of the ministers of the Vaudois church to this society. The next point to which I would call the attention of this Committee, is Geneva. The character and services of the Bible Society in that city have, it appears to me, been grievously misrepresented in some of the recent publications in this country, on the subject of the Apocryphal controversy. From the fact of the society in Geneva not discovering much zeal for the distribution of the Geneva version of 1805, of which the orthodoxy was called in question, the consequence has arisen, that the friends of that version have gradually seceded from the ranks of the institution. And, let it be recorded to the praise of the society at Geneva, that, when the great mass of the continental Bible Societies were anxious, by establishing counter resolutions of their own, to manifest a spirit of resistance to the Anti-Apocryphal resolution of the London Committee, the Geneva Society opposed this measure, and publicly manifested its fidelity towards the British and Foreign Bible Society, and its lively gratitude for the favours bestowed upon it through a series of years. Assisted by powerful auxiliaries, and especially by that of Satigny, under the administration of a most enlightened and devout member of the church, M. le Pasteur Gaussen, they are doing much for that part of Switzerland, and supplying an example on the continent, of sending money for the distribution of books in remote parts of the world. Of two individuals, occupying distinguished posts in that society, I must say a few words. Its president, M. Vernet, is a person who has experimentally felt the value of the Bible, and manifested, in