Those poor refugees who fled to escape from the horrors {19} of Sainte Guillotine, or the ruthless cruelties at Nismes, came to brethren many of whom had never seen the glowing valleys and golden fields of Languedoc, whence their forefathers escaped only with life and hands to work. They had preserved their national characteristics; they attended churches and chapels where the pastors still spoke their native tongue, and where they had established schools for their children; but they had settled down to a quiet, though a busy life, in the heart of the great workshop of the world, and only a few of them—principally the gentry, some of whom had regained a portion of their property—felt frequent or urgent impulses to return. More than a hundred and twenty years had elapsed since the "Royal Bounty" had been expended in the relief of the 27,000 émigrés who yet were without any permanent refuge for the destitute, the sick, the aged, and the insane among their number. This was in 1688, and it was not till nearly twenty-eight years afterwards that any regular institution was organized. The earlier refugees had become aged or had died, after having obtained such temporary help as could be afforded by subscriptions or the large benefactions of their more wealthy fellow-countrymen. Still, the later emigrations increased the number of applicants for permanent relief. At last, in 1718, a great concourse of French refugees assembled in a chapel which formed a special portion of a building only just completed, but which had already received the dignity of forming the subject of a Royal charter granted by His Majesty King George I. to his "right trusty and right well-beloved" cousin, Henry de Massue, Marquis de Ruvigny, Earl of Galloway, and a number of trusty and well-beloved gentlemen, all naturalized refugees, who made {20} the first governor and directors of the "Hospital for Poor French Protestants and their descendants residing in Great Britain;" otherwise known as the French Hospital, but soon to be spoken of with simple pathetic brevity as "La Providence." The idea of founding such a charity was due to a distinguished refugee in Holland—no less a personage than M. de Gastigny, Master of the Hounds to Prince William of Orange; a ruddy, jovial-looking gentleman withal, whose portrait, should you go to see it, will set you wondering whether he could ever have been classed among the "sour sectaries" to whom it was the fashion to attribute a disregard of social pleasures. A bequest of a thousand pounds sterling from the bluff keeper of the kennels was to be divided into equal sums—£500 for the building, and the interest of the remaining £500 to be spent on its maintenance.