Rise and Establishment of Protestantism at Geneva - James Aitken Wylie

Geneva profited immensely in another way by
the movement, of which it had become the
headquarters. The men who crowded to it, and to
whom it so hospitably opened its gates, conferred
on it greater advantages than any they received
from it. They were of every rank, profession, and
trade, and they brought to the city of their adoption,
not refinement of birth and elegance of letters only,
but also new arts and improved industries. There
immediately ensued a great quickening of the
energies of labor and skill in Geneva, and these
brought in their turn that wealth and conscious
dignity which labor and skill never fail to impart. It
is a new nation that we behold forming on the soil
of the republic, with germs and elements in its
bosom, higher and more various than infant State
had ever before enjoyed. The fathers of the great
Roman people were but a band of outlaws and
adventurers! How different the men we now see
assembling on the shores of the Leman to lay the
foundations of the Rome of Protestantism, from
those who had gathered at the foot of the
Capitoline to lay the first stone in the Eternal City!
From the strand of Naples to the distant shores of
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