into the higher Alpine fastnesses and pursued with the most terrible ferocities of fanatic savagery, with fire and sword and extermination. These horrors were aggravated by winter and famine, and the news of this fearful butchery rang through Protestant England with a sensation which revived all the memory of the Popish horrors in the Marian time. There was one loud outcry for interference on their behalf. Press and pulpit resounded with demands of sympathy and redress: the ministers of all classes waited on Cromwell in a body to solicit his protection of the Vaudois: the army in Scotland and Ireland sent up addresses. No one appeared, however, more excited than Cromwell himself. He immediately gave two thousand pounds, and appointed a day of general humiliation, and a collection on their behalf, which was observed, and thirty-eight thousand two hundred and twenty-eight pounds were speedily raised, and sent by envoys to Geneva, to be conveyed to the sufferers. Nor did Cromwell satisfy himself with having done this. The day of the arrival of the news, June 3rd, 1655, he was about to sign a treaty of peace with France; but he refused to sign it till he had seen whether the French king and Mazarin would heartily unite with him in extorting protection from the Duke of Savoy for the sufferers. Mazarin was loth to stir in such a business, but Cromwell soon let him see that there would be no peace for France unless he did, and he consented. Three Latin letters were written by Milton at the order of the Protector to different States of Europe, calling on them to co-operate for this great end, and the mighty poet sent forth also his glorious sonnet, commencing-- "Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold!" which shall remain like a perpetual trumpet-blast through all time. The astonished Duke of Savoy was soon compelled to give ample guarantee for the religious liberty and security of his Protestant subjects.