school-room is very large, airy, and well lighted; it was formerly a convent.  The system of education differs a little from that practiced in England; but the children, about 240 in number, are apparently under an efficient course of instruction and discipline.  The younger boys have a string put round the neck, which confines them to the place during the lesson, but I observed it did not confine their attention.  We were much pleased with the countenance and manners of the director, the Abbot Luigi Brocciolini; his heart appears to be in his work, which is by no means easy.

We left Florence early on the 13th, and had four days’ hard travelling to Genoa.  From Sestri to Genoa, a day’s journey, is by the sea, and under the mountains, some of them of a tremendous height, and beautifully covered with olives, vines, and figs:  the houses hang quite on the sides of the mountains amidst the olives; I do not remember to have passed through any country equally picturesque.

We had packed as many books and tracts as we well could in our wardrobe trunks, which were not once opened at the different custom-houses, but the surplus tracts, &c., we were obliged to put into a spare box by themselves, and this box was not suffered to pass the frontier of Sardinia.  The first officer was embarrassed, not knowing how to act, and sent a gendarme with us to the bureau of Sarzana, the next town.  The officer there was remarkably civil, but told us the law is such that books cannot enter except on conditions to which we could not in our conscience submit.  We therefore left them in the bureau, desiring that they might be made useful:  a person in the office said, in a half-whisper, These are the books to turn the people’s heads.  We were glad this loss did not prevent us from distributing others out of our remaining store, at the inns, and pretty freely on the road.

Their object in returning by Genoa was to visit the valleys of Piedmont.  They reached Turin on the 19th, and proceeded on the 22nd to Pignerol.  From this place they visited most of the valleys, went into all the families where Stephen Grellet had been, and had frequent religious conversation with the pastors and some of the people.

We spent, says J.Y., five days amongst them.  The old pastor Best died soon after the time that Stephen Grellet was there.  We met his son, lately appointed chaplain to the Protestant congregation at Turin.  He is a young man of talent, lively and intelligent, and desirous of being useful in his new sphere of action.  He came to us often at our little inn, and made many inquiries as to the nature of our religious principles; our conversation mostly turned on the necessity of the assistance of the Holy Spirit in the exercise of Christian ministry.  This he fully admitted, but was not prepared to dispense with the necessity of an academical preparation.  I fear that sending the young men to Geneva for this purpose has not always had a salutary effect.