“The work of Mr. Smiles embraces a subject which has never been adequately treated, at least in English literature—the history, namely, of the French and Flemish Protestant refugees in this country, and their descendants.
“Of the powerful influence exercised by this immigration on our industry, commerce, arts, literature, even our usages and modes of thought, few are aware. The subject is by no means a familiar one among ourselves. The whole revolution, so to speak, took place so gradually, the new population amalgamated so readily and thoroughly with the old, that people hardly attached to the phenomena which passed under their eyes their real importance. Mr. Smiles’s account of it is, therefore, admirably calculated to impart, not only new knowledge, but really new ideas, to most of us.
“To readers who love to dwell on heroic vicissitudes rather than on mere details of economical progress, Mr. Smiles’s account of the persecution in France, the sufferings of the many and the marvellous escapes of the few, will prove the most attractive part of his work.
“How this noble army of emigrants for conscience sake—the truest aristocracy, perhaps, which has ever developed itself—gradually and peacefully amalgamated with that mass of the English people which they had done so much to enrich and to instruct, Mr. Smiles has fully shown. He recounts their euthanasia, if such it may be termed, as he does their rise. To one of the great causes of their success, and not in England only, he does ample justice. They were, as a body, extremely well educated; and they jealously transmitted that inheritance, which they had brought from France, to their children. The poorest Huguenot refugee was almost always a cultivated man. Hence their great advantage in the fair race of industry.”—Pall Mall Gazette.
“Mr. Smiles’s book on the ‘Huguenots’ is an improvement on anything he has yet done, and it deserves a success which, by reason of its very merits, we fear it has no chance of attaining. The subject breaks ground that may almost be called fallow. Many chapters of English history, and these not the least interesting or important, are for the first time written, with the care and breadth they deserve, by Mr. Smiles.”—London Review.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Ditto marks were replaced in the Appendix with the actual words.
Page xiii, “Pertinaceous” changed to “Pertinacious” (Pertinacious Rats)
Page xiv, “Locustra” changed to “Locusta” (Locusta migratoria)