It was, in truth, a marvellous sight;--a free and independent Parliament meeting in the ancient capital of the bigoted Piedmont, with a free press and a public looking on, and one of the long proscribed Vaudois race occupying a seat in it. The more I thought of it, the more I wondered. The causes which had led to so extraordinary a result seemed clearly providential. When King Charles Albert in 1848 gave his subjects a Constitution, no one had asked it, and few there were who could value it, or even knew what a Constitution meant. One or two public writers there were who said that public opinion demanded it; but, in sooth, there was then no public opinion in the country. Soon after this the campaign in Lombardy was commenced, and the result of that campaign threatened the Piedmontese Constitution with extinction. The Piedmontese army was beaten by the Austrians, and had to make a hasty and inglorious retreat into their own country. Every one then expected that Radetzky would march upon Turin, put down the Constitution, and seize upon Sardinia. Contrary to his usual habits, the old warrior halted on the frontier, as if kept back by an invisible power, and the Constitution was saved. Then came the death of Charles Albert, of a broken heart, in Oporto, whither he had fled; and every one believed that the Piedmontese charter would accompany its author to the tomb. The dispositions and policy of the new king were unknown; but the probability was that he would follow the example of his brother sovereigns of Italy, all of whom had begun to revoke the Constitutions which they had so recently inaugurated with solemn oaths. Happily these fears were not realized. The new perils passed over, and left the Constitution unscathed. King Victor Immanuel,--a constitutional monarch simply by accident,--turned out a good-natured, easy-minded man, who loved the chase and his country seat, and found it more agreeable to live on good terms with his subjects, and enjoy a handsome civil list,--which his Parliament has taken care to vote him,--than to be indebted for his safety and a bankrupt exchequer to the bayonets of his guards. Thus marvellously, hitherto, in the midst of dangers at home and re-action abroad, has the Piedmontese charter been preserved. I dwell with the greater minuteness on this point, because on the integrity of that charter are suspended the civil liberties of the Church of the Vaudois. When I was in Turin the Constitution was three years old; but even then its existence was exceedingly precarious. The King could have revoked it at any moment; and there was not then, I was assured by General Beckwith,--who knows the state of the Piedmontese nation well,--moral power in the country to offer any effectual resistance, had the royal will decreed the suppression of constitutional government. "But," added he, "should the Constitution live three years longer, the people by that time will have