From France also came great numbers of the best and noblest of her people, men and women of whom she was not worthy, forced from their country by the severity of laws which placed truth, sincerity and uprightness before God and man, on a par with treason and murder. Louis XIV., an old debauchee, sought to atone for a life of profligacy by converting the Huguenots to the Catholic faith, even at the point of the sword; their native land was made intolerable to them, and they sought for peace by flight and voluntary exile. But flight and exile were no longer permitted to them; to leave their native land was made felony. Tyranny however, is powerless against the human will based on the rights of conscience; and spite of the prohibitions of law, the persecuted Calvinists fled in thousands to that happy land beyond the Atlantic, the noblest privilege of which has ever been, that it furnished a safe asylum to the truehearted and the conscientious of every European land, and where men might worship their Maker according to the dictates of their own souls. These refugees were warmly welcomed to New England and New York, but the mild congenial climate of South Carolina was more attractive to the exiles of France. At the risk of prolonging somewhat this portion of our history, we must be permitted to give an extract from the narrative of Judith Manigault, the young wife of one of the exiles. It was felony, it must be remembered, to leave their native land; therefore, says she, “we quitted home by night, leaving the soldiers in their beds, and abandoning the house with its furniture. We contrived to hide ourselves for ten days at Romans, in Dauphiny, while a search was made for us, but our faithful hostess would not betray us.” They reached the shore by a circuitous journey through Germany and Holland, and thence to England, in the depth of winter. “Embarking at London,” says the narrative, “we were sadly off.” The spotted fever appeared on board the vessel, and many died of the disease, among the rest our aged mother. We touched at Bermuda, where the vessel was seized. Our money was all spent; with great difficulty we procured a passage in another vessel. After our arrival in Carolina, we suffered every kind of evil. In eighteen months our eldest brother, unaccustomed to the hard labour which we were obliged to undergo, died of a fever. Since leaving France we have experienced every kind of affliction—disease, pestilence, famine, poverty, hard labour—and have been six months without tasting bread, working the ground like slaves; indeed, I myself have passed three or four years without having it when I wanted it. “Yet,” adds she, in a noble spirit of resignation, “God has done great things in enabling us to bear up under so many trials.”