No. 772.-12 March, 1859.-Third Series, No. 50. POETRY.-Time's Book, 684. Kingdom of God, 684. Easter Day, 684. Law of Love, 684. SHORT ARTICLES.-Wife and Wolf, 679. A New Diplomatic Journal, 679. Deep Inspirations, 683. Precession of the Equinoxes, 686. Vapor of Prussic Acid, 686. Subscribers to the Suez Canal, 695. The Hearts of Louis XIII. and XIV., 704. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL, SON, & Co., Bofton; and DELISSER & PROCTER, 508 Broadway, New York. For Six Dollars a year, remitted directly to either of the Publishers, the Living Age will be punctually forwarded free of postage. Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume. ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers. ANY NUMBER may be had for 12 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value. JOHN F. OBERLIN, PASTOR OF THE BAN PART I. THE BAN, AND THOSE WHO DWELT THERE. 66 Marshall Tavannes, aided by several ecclesiastics, led on the now infuriated mob with cries of "Slay the Huguenots!" Kill the heretics!" "The game is ensnared!" "The ABOUT an hour before daybreak, on the king desires every man of them to be morning of the 24th of August, 1572, the destroyed;" a statement which Charles himyoung king of France, Charles IX., accom- self testified to be true by firing from the panied by the Queen-mother, Catherine de balcony upon the unhappy creatures who were Medici, and the Duke of Anjou, left his private fleeing from their murderers, and by hallooing apartments-where during the whole night he on his soldiery with cries of Kill! kill!" had been in close conference with the Guises Never did the sun rise on such a scene of and other chiefs of the Roman Catholic nobility blood as it shone upon on that Sabbath morn-and ascended to an open balcony of the ing. The streets of Paris were literally Louvre, which commanded a view of the washed with the gore of those whose only streets around. All was hushed in silence. crime was attachment to the Word of God. The city slept below them. No sound broke The innocence of childhood and the white the stillness save the footfall of the sentinels hairs of age were alike disregarded in the as they paced their rounds, or the murmur of carnage. Persons of both sexes and of every the river which at intervals came floating by age and condition were murdered without upon the night wind. Not a word was spoken | mercy. The infant was stabbed on the breast by the party as they sat. Some solemn of the mother; the sick, the sleeping, parent mystery seemed to have chained their utter- and child, servant and master, were indisance. The queen-mother watched the king, with compressed lips and a calm, determined air. In Charles's bosom a dreadful struggle was evidently going on, for a livid paleness overspread his countenance, as he repeatedly rose from his seat and looked toward the east, or stooped to listen as if in expectation of hearing some signal from the street below, while at the same time his frame trembled, and the perspiration stood like beads upon his forehead. criminately slaughtered. The massacre continued for several days, during which time, according to Perefixe, more than twenty seigneurs de marque, twelve hundred gentlemen, and from three to four thousand tradesmen and servants, were savagely butchered. Not satisfied with having drenched his capital with the blood of his subjects, the king issued commands to the governors of the provinces to hunt down and exterminate the Huguenots within their reach. The mandate The hour passed away. The east began to was willingly obeyed; and in Bourges, in redden with the dawn of the Sabbath. The Lyons, in Toulouse, in Orleans, and in several great bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois toiled other places, the horrors of the metropolis out the call to matins, and thus announced were re-enacted. These appalling transactions the day of St. Bartholomew. The sound of struck terror to the hearts of such of the the bell had scarcely ceased, when the city, so reformers as had escaped the slaughter. lately lapped in darkness and silence, seemed Some of them fled to Rochelle and Sancerre filled with the glare of torches and the hum which they fortified. Others escaped to Engof assembling multitudes. The drums beat land, to Switzerland, to Germany, to the fastto arms; and the royal troops, mingled withnesses of the Vosges, and of other ranges of crowds of armed citizens, poured into the mountains near the basin of the Rhine, and streets, and surrounded the houses of both not a few of them, we believe, sought shelter rich and poor who were either known or sus- from persecution and freedom to worship God pected to profess or favor Protestant opinions. in the wild, sterile district called the Ban de The dwellings of the Huguenot leaders were la Roche. first assaulted, and Admiral Coligny, Francis The "Ban," or district, derives its name from de la Rochefoucault, Beauvais, and several the neighboring castle of La Roche. The other distinguished persons-who had been Germans call the Ban "Steinthal," or the induced to come to Paris by the king to wit- valley of stone. Formerly it was part of the ness the marriage of his sister Margaret-province of Alsace, in the north-east of France, were almost simultaneously assassinated. and is situated on the western slope of the The Dukes of Montpensier, Aumale, and Champ de Feu, an isolated range of mountains he was conducted to a miserable hovel, in one 66 "And what do you teach the children ?” Nothing, sir." 66 66 Nothing! How is that? "Because," replied the old man, with genuine naïvete, “I know nothing myself." Why, then, were you appointed schoolmaster?" "Why, sir, I had been taking care of the Waldbach pigs, and when I got too old and infirm for that employment, I was sent here to take care of the children!" of volcanic origin-as the name implies separated by a deep valley from the eastern chain of the Vosges. The Ban contains only two parishes-one called Rothau; the other comprises the hamlets of Waldbach, Zolbach, Belmont, Bellefosse, and Foudai, inhabited almost exclusively by Lutherans. Waldbach, which lies nearly in the centre of these hamlets, is about eighteen hundred feet above the level of the sea; and four hundred feet below Waldbach, on the mountain-side, stands Rothau. The two parishes contain about nine thousand acres, the sterility of which may be judged from the fact, that, even at present, little more than fifteen hundred are capable of cultivation. Here, defended by the mountain torrent and the precipice, did the children of the Reformation expect to enjoy freedom to worship God, but they were disappointed. Stouber found the schools of the other vilWave after wave of persecution broke upon lages in a similar condition; and Herr Krafft them during the thirty years' war and the-whose interesting little work, "Aus Oberreign of Louis XIV., which so desolated the lin's Leben," we should like to see widely cir Ban as to render it almost incapable of afford-culated in this country-shows that nothing ing sustenance to any human being. Never- could be more deplorably wretched than the theless, about eighty or a hundred families, ignorance of the masters, who, for the most destitute of all the necessaries of civilized life, part, were swineherds and shepherds! During and shut out from intercourse with the inhab- the months of summer, they ranged the hills itants of the neighboring districts, in conse- with their flocks, but in winter they were quence of the want of roads, here continued transformed into "dominies," without any to drag on a most wretched and miserable qualification for their office, but a most laudexistence. At length the province of Alsace able stock of good intentions, which led them was united to France, one of the stipulations to attempt to teach the children what they of the decree of union being that its inhabi- themselves could not understand; for the lantants should be permitted to possess that unge of the Ban is a patois, evidently the pearl of price, liberty of conscience. Whether old dialect of Lorraine; when, therefore, they in this arrangement Louis le Grand was taught their charge to read a French or Gerinfluenced by the numerical strength of the man elementary work, or a fragment of a Lutherans in the province, or by his recogni- French Bible, they were wholly incapable of tion of a claim which is the birthright of every explaining the sense or of giving the correct man, we shall not pause to inquire. Suffice it pronunciation! to say, that the decree brought no change to A man of less ardent piety and determined the moral or physical condition of the poor resolution than M. Stouber would have dedwellers in the "valley of stone." Persecu- parted from the Ban in hopeless despair of tion had nearly consummated its fiendish work. ever being able to bring about a revolution in It is true that some of the forms of religion the condition of its wretched inhabitants; but were preserved among them, that they said he was rich in faith. For fourteen years this they were of the reformed faith; but why or accomplished man, aided by his beloved wife, wherefore, in 1750, they scarcely knew. whose remains repose in the churchyard of About that period, a devout and earnest Waldbach, labored unceasingly to effect the clergyman, moved by their wretched state, object which lay next his heart, by establishundertook the charge of the Ban. His name ing schools, by circulating as many copies of was Stouber. When he entered on his cure, the Scriptures as his poverty would allow him he was desirous to know what was the state to obtain, by assiduous pastoral visitation, and of education in the district, and, on inquiring by the faithful preaching of the gospel of for the principal school, to his astonishment Christ. Soon after the death of his wife, |