Excerpt from Sketches of Protestantism in Italy: Past and Present, Including a Notice of the Origin, History, and Present State of the Waldenses At an early period of his sojourn in Europe, he was kindly solicited by gentlemen in England, as well as in his native land, to prepare a work on the state of religion on the Continent. And since the publication of his Religion in America, he has often been asked whether he does not intend to prepare a work, correlative and correspondent, on Europe. But however much he may desire to comply with such suggestions and such requests, his official and other duties are too numerous and too pressing to permit him to hope to be able to accomplish such a task within a short time. All that he can do is to prepare, at intervals, a volume relating to a part of the great field in question. In the present work he has made a beginning. And should this effort to delineate the religious state of the country to which it relates be favorably received by the Christian public, and God grant life and health, it will be followed at no very distant day by similar volumes, relating to France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Russia, etc. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.