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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863 by Various
page 68 of 311 (21%)
and crush the hope of humanity.

In these days of fear, a Huguenot colony sailed for the New World. The
calm, stern man who represented and led the Protestantism of France felt
to his inmost heart the peril of the time. He would fain build up a city
of refuge for the persecuted sect. Yet Gaspar de Coligny, too high in
power and rank to be openly assailed, was forced to act with caution. He
must act, too, in the name of the Crown, and in virtue of his office of
Admiral of France. A nobleman and a soldier,--for the Admiral of France
was no seaman,--he shared the ideas and habits of his class; nor is there
reason to believe him to have been in advance of others of his time in a
knowledge of the principles of successful colonization. His scheme
promised a military colony, not a free commonwealth. The Huguenot party
was already a political, as well as a religious party. At its foundation
lay the religious element, represented by Geneva, the martyrs, and the
devoted fugitives who sang the psalms of Marot among rocks and caverns.
Joined to these were numbers on whom the faith sat lightly, whose hope was
in commotion and change. Of these, in great part, was the Huguenot
noblesse, from Condé, who aspired to the crown,--

"Ce petit homme tant joli,
Qui toujours chante, toujours rit,"--

to the younger son of the impoverished seigneur whose patrimony was his
sword. More than this, the restless, the factious, the discontented began
to link their fortunes to a party whose triumph would involve confiscation
of the bloated wealth of the only rich class in France. An element of the
great revolution was already mingling in the strife of religions.

America was still a land of wonder. The ancient spell still hung unbroken
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