When they preached, their outlandish accent moved the derision of the audience.

They spelt like washerwomen.

Their diction was disfigured by foreign idioms; and, when they meant to be eloquent, they imitated, as well as they could, what was considered as fine writing in those Italian academies where rhetoric had then reached the last stage of corruption.

Disputants labouring under these disadvantages would scarcely, even with truth on their side, have been able to make head against men whose style is eminently distinguished by simple purity and grace.

[119] The situation of England in the year 1686 cannot be better described than in the words of the French Ambassador.