men in the prime of life walked all the
distance to New York, camping out in their
carts in the environs of the city, through the
night, till the bell summoned them on Sunday
morning to service, in the old Church du
Saint Esprit. In the same way they
returned on Sunday evening. The old longing
for home recorded in Allan Cunningham's
ballad—

"It's hame, and it's hame, hame fain "would I be;
O, hame, hame, hame, to my ain countree!"—

clung to the breasts, and caused singular
melancholy in some of them. There was one
old man who went every day down to the sea
shore, to look and gaze his fill towards the
beautiful cruel land where most of his life
had been passed. With his face to the east
—his eyes strained, as if by force of longing
looks he could see the far distant France—he
said his morning prayers, and sang one of
Clément Marot's hymns. There had been
an edition of the Psalms of David, put into
French rhyme, (" Pseaumes de David, mis en
Rime françoise, par Clément Marot et
Théodore de Bèze)", published in as small a form
as possible, in order that the book might be
concealed in their bosoms, if the Huguenots
were surprised in their worship while they
lived in France.

Nor were Oxford and New Rochelle the
only settlements of the Huguenots in the
United States. Farther south again they
were welcomed, and found resting-places in
Virginia and South Carolina.

I now return to the Huguenots in England.
Even during James the Second's reign,
collections were made for the refugees; and, in
the reign of his successor, fifteen thousand
pounds were voted by Parliament "to be
distributed among persons of quality, and all
such as by age or infirmity were unable to
support themselves." There are still, or
were not many years ago, a few survivors of
the old Huguenot stock, who go on quarter-
day to claim their small benefit from this fund
at the Treasury; and doubtless at the time it
was granted there were many friendless and
helpless to whom the little pensions were
inestimable boons. But the greater part
were active, strong men, full of good sense
and practical talent; and they preferred
taking advantage of the national good-will in
a more independent form. Their descendants
bear honoured names among us. Sir Samuel
Romilly, Mrs. Austin, and Miss Harriet
Martineau, are three of those that come most
prominently before me as I write; but each
of these names are suggestive of others in the
same families worthy of note. Sir Samuel
Romilly's ancestors came from the south of
France, where the paternal estate fell to a
distant relation rather than to the son, because
the former was a Catholic, while the latter
had preferred a foreign country with "freedom
to worship God." In Sir Samuel Romilly's
account of his father and grandfather, it is
easy to detect the southern character
predominating. Most affectionate, impulsive,
generous, carried away by transports of anger
and of grief, tender and true in all his
relationships—the reader does not easily forget
the father of Sir Samuel Romilly, with his
fond adoption of Montaigne's idea, "playing
on a flute by the side of his daughter's bed
in order to waken her in the morning." No
wonder he himself was so beloved! But
there was much more demonstration of affection
in all these French households, if what
I have gathered from their descendants be
correct, than we English should ever dare to
manifest.

French was the language still spoken
among themselves sixty and seventy years
after their ancestors had quitted France. In
the Romilly family, the father established it
as a rule, that French should be always
spoken on a Sunday. Forty years later, the
lady to whom I have so often alluded was
living, an orphan child, with two maiden
aunts, in the heart of London city. They
always spoke French. English was the
foreign language; and a certain pride was
cultivated in the little damsel's mind by the
fact of her being reminded every now and
then that she was a little French girl; bound
to be polite, gentle, and attentive in manners;
to stand till her elders gave her leave to sit
down; to curtsey on entering or leaving a
room. She attended her relations to the
early market near Spitalfields; where many
herbs not in general use in England, and
some "weeds" were habitually brought by
the market-women for the use of the French
people. Burnet, chervil, dandelion were
amongst the number, in order to form the
salads which were a principal dish at meals.
There were still hereditary schools in the
neighbourhood, kept by descendants of the
first refugees who established them, and to
which the Huguenot families still sent their
children. A kind of correspondence was
occasionally kept up with the unseen and
distant relations in France; third or fourth
cousins it might be. As was to be expected,
such correspondence languished and died by
slow degrees. But tales of their ancestors'
sufierings and escapes beguiled the long
winter evenings. Though far away from
France, though cast off by her a hundred
years before, the gentle old ladies, who had
lived all their lives in London, considered
France as their country, and England as a
strange land. Upstairs, too, was a great
chest—the very chest Magdalen Lefebvre
had had packed to accompany her in her
flight, and escape in the mattress. The
stores her fond mother had provided for her
trousseau were not yet exhausted, though she
slept in her grave; and out of them her little
orphan descendant was dressed; and when
the quaintness of the pattern made the child
shrink from putting on so peculiar a dress,
she was asked, "Are you not a little French