The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

DECADENCE OF FRANCE. 483beauty, and yet not taste its fruits. Cretinism, with whichthe popish cantons especially are overspread, is well knownto be owing to filth, insufficient food, and mental stagnancy;and wherever one travels in the popish cantons of Helvetia,he is perpetually met by idiotcy, mendicancy, and every formof misery." ubiqueLuctus, ubique squalor."This was the land of the confessor as well as of the persecutor.Here, during many ages, burned the " Waldensiancandlestick," shedding its heavenly light on a cluster of lovelyvalleys, when the rest of Europe lay shrouded in deepestnight.This Church, the most venerable in Christendom, hasenjoyed a revival in our day. Its Synod was holden in thepresent summer (1851) ; and the sound moral and physicalcondition of its people contrasts instructively with the ignoranceand disease around them.It was stated that twentyfiveper cent, of the population was at school, and only oneper cent, in the hospital.We turn northward into France.France, from its centralposition, extent and fertility of territory, and the geniusof its people, was obviously meant by nature to be one ofthe first of European kingdoms. We find France takingthe lead at the opening of modern European history, and,after a period of decadence, resuming her former place underLouis XIV. Since that time her progress has been steadilydownward. No doubt she is nominally richer at this moment,both in population and in revenue, than she was underthe grancle monarque ; but taking the actual value of moneyinto account, and comparing the increase of France inthepoints specified, with that of Protestant countries, she isvastly poorer in these, as she is in all other points. Thisdecline is directly traceable—indeed her greatest historianstrace it—to her bigotry, by which, no sooner had her tradeand commerce become flourishing, and no sooner had theprinciples of loyalty and virtue taken root among her people,than she made renewed and desperate attempts to extin-