The extraordinary movement in the religious world, called the New Reformation, had just then set in with a liveliness of judgment, and a celerity of conversion among the lower classes of Roman Catholics, which scarcely anybody could understand.

The saints, however, or evangelical party, headed by an amiable, benevolent, but somewhat credulous nobleman, on whose property the movement first commenced, ascribed this extraordinary conversion altogether to themselves.
The season to be sure in which it occurred was one of unprecedented destitution and famine.

Fuel was both scarce and bad--the preceding crops had failed, and food was not only of a deleterious quality, but scarcely to be procured at all.

The winter, too, was wet and stormy, and the deluges of rain daily and incessant.

In fact, cold, and nakedness, and hunger met together in almost every house and every cabin, with the exception of those of the farmers alone, who, by the way, mostly held land upon a very small scale.