This then has been the foundation of Vaudois morality, they knew no other rule of faith than the Gospel, and, as far as possible, adapted their sentiments and conduct to it. The sacred duty of an historian compels me to allow, that the effects of human frailty have sometimes shown themselves among them. Leger, who wrote more than a century ago, thus allows also, that "the Vaudois, his cotemporaries, no longer possessed that great sanctity and detachment from the world which distinguished their ancestors. But I must add," he continues, "that, compared with other reformed nations, there is none which surpass them in zeal for the word of God and constancy to their faith, at the peril of their lives and fortunes; as well as in simplicity, innocence, sobriety, and industry. For they abstain from cards, dice, gambling, and swearing, and have a horror of drunkenness, and even of dancing. So that if any one falls into a vicious life, he is esteemed infamous. Law-suits have been from time immemorial unknown among them; but, according to Thuanus, the first took place in the 16th century, owing to the litigious disposition of a young man, who had gained a smattering of law at the college of Turin, and sued his neighbour for having suffered some goats to browse among his cabbages." However much it may cost me to avow it, I must in my turn allow that the Vaudois have degenerated since the days of Leger; law-suits are beginning to become common among them, and luxury and card playing are insensibly introduced; nay, there are even some families who live without labour, a thing formerly unknown.* The zeal for religion has also cooled in those parishes adjoining Piémont. But these blots in the morals of my compatriots are perhaps inevitable to human weakness, which cannot approach perfection: perhaps, too, we are carried away by the common mania of believing our ancestors ever better than ourselves. I remark this both for Leger and myself. * Qui vivent dans l'oisiveté, et donnent parla un exemple pernicieux.--Perhaps this is translated in too favourable a sense.