done some great thing for the people of the Pra that day. It seemed, indeed, as if other arms than those of men had fought for the valley. Few of the Vaudois had fallen, and the mountain friends rejoiced especially that Gueslin's wound, which he insisted was but a scratch, promised to heal soon under the surgery of old Gaston, who in his long shepherd life had acquired a safe and simple skill not always taught at colleges. Among the enemy the havoc had been tremendous, particularly in the defiles and slopes where the Provençals fell on them, and clearing the pass of its dead was melancholy work, but they had no time for shrinking. The dead were given to dust in the fashion of battle-field burial. The passes to all the valleys were secured, the bastion repaired, and by Robert's directions the culverin was mounted upon it so as to command the approach from Angrogna. Valuable auxiliaries had the Provençal and his men been, yet the Vaudois had soon cause to wish for improvement in their allies. They were fearless in war, but they had neither mercy nor moderation. "Slay them! slay them!" was Robert's continual cry, whether the enemy stood or retreated. No persuasions, no entreaties, could induce him or his men to give quarter. At such times he pointed to the burned villages, and cried, "Avenge this blood!" "Vengeance belongs to God, and is not the duty of Christians," said the Barbes to him when he talked in this fashion. "Christians!" cried Robert; "there was room for them in the world before popes were invented; but now their cruelty has left space for nothing but steel!" His men were, if possible, more relentless than himself; but they lived peaceably among the Vaudois, who shared their huts with them, and Robert was quartered by his own desire with the Constants. He had served their cause as no mortal had ever done, and a softened light would gather in his glance at times, when in the interval of rest which succeeded their victory the mountain friends sat together, singing the old hymns of the hills, or talking of pastor Joseph and the Shepherd's-rest. There was, nevertheless, one among them who looked with no friendly eye on the Provençal, and that was Humbert Renaud. The free-spoken warrior had rebuked the latter in no measured terms for deserting the bastion, and insisted on its command being conferred on Gueslin; but young Rosa modestly declined it. The council of Barbes and experienced men now chosen to preside over the valley, bestowed the post, much to his satisfaction, on Robert himself. Its chief recommendation to him was the culverin, with which Robert said he would keep both priests and soldiers at a distance; but Humbert, though conscious of his own error, could never forgive its exposure, and at length persuaded himself that he was an injured man. We are told, on the highest authority, that pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. It is emphatically so in the falls of the soul; and a haughty spirit wrought in Humbert, making him gloomy among his friends, and reserved even with Renee, whom he accused of over looking his merits and favouring the Provençal. Reuce was troubled at his gloom, and more at his silence. "It was want of thought," she said," and not of zeal or courage. You will do better next time." But Humbert disdained such consolation, and made no reply. In the mean time, Robert and Victor pushed on the war vigorously. Outposts were driven in, convoys surprised, redoubts destroyed, pass, glen, and river recovered as far as Lucerna; and, at length, it was determined to open a communication with Gianavello, and unite with him to reconquer the valleys. At times the Provençals made sallies by themselves; and such was the terror they inspired, that the soldiers fled before them wherever they came, and the Romanı catholic towns began to petition earnestly for peace to the Vaudois, that they might be spared such dangerous neighbours. Sundry priests and abbots joined in similar memorials to the court of Turin, where the English ambasador had just delivered that famous remonstrance, "whose like," says a chronicler of the period, "no mere man ever uttered to a crowned head before." pass On the day in which one of their poor brethren, who had escaped from the prison of La Torre, brought to the people of the Pra the news that the great Isle of England, concerning whose ships and towns men had been used to speak in the Alpine villages, had so boldly espoused their cause, and was raising money to rebuild the ruined homes and churches of the valleys, the mountain friends sat together in the grassy corner before their huts, while the shadow of the great rock screened them from the noonday sun; and the midday meal, which they had eaten together in sign of rejoicing, was over. From that corner they could almost see the level platform of rock above the where they had parted with pastor Joseph. How many sad and terrible things had come and gone since then! Now there was hope of getting back to the Shepherd's-rest, where their homes still stood and their corn was growing, and yet no news of him. In that valley of great trial, and now of victory, they were much as they had been in the mountain dell. The four huts sheltered the same families, and the hope of happier days had been fulfilled, for Gueslin Rosa had joined the community in worship as well as in war. There was a new scar now upon his brow, and the oak Louisin planted was growing on his mother's grave. Old Marietta still kept what she called his house, the hut of forest branches, and had almost given up her dependence on Father Ambrose and the wooden rosary. The Provençal leader sat between Gues lin and Victor, his chosen men out of all the Vau dois; but his restless eye roved over the valley, and drew their attention to a man who approached with hesitation, as if uncertain of his reception. His garb was that of a poor peasant, his look haggard and careworn. There was no hair to be seen under his ragged cap, and no one could guess his years; but as he came nearer, Louisin sprang up, exclaiming, "Renee! Victor! it is Claude!! Stay, friends!" cried the young man, who it will be recollected had accompanied pastor Joseph, trembling in every fibre as all rushed to welcome him: "Father, don't come near me till you hear what I have to tell, and if you think it right I will go away and never see you more. You know in what good hopes I left you; it may be, depending too much on my own strength, or the tempter would not have overcome me so far as to suffer me to deny my faith, when my mind never doubted: it was in a moment of mean and miserable weakness. They bound me to the wheel. The thoughts of home came upon me. I did not look to the Strong for strength, and my courage failed. Friends, I have repented of that with more suffering than the wheel could ever inflict-can you forgive me? God has, I trust, already done so, for I have sought his forgiveness earnestly and with many tears." The group stood speechless for a moment. They had not expected such mournful intelligence as this; but Humbert, casting on his brother a withering look of rage and scorn, cried, " Apostate! what brought you here to shame your family ?" "Humbert!" said Renee, who never feared being forward in her duty, "Peter denied his Master, and you have not been tried with binding to the wheel. Welcome, Claude," she continued, shaking the wanderer's hand. "It was a sore temptation, and our earthly part is weak; but you have come back to us, and will be again our brother." Before she had ceased, Victor grasped his other hand and led him to a seat amongst them, while old Gaston welcomed his son with tears of mingled joy and sorrow, saying, "Thou hast indeed been lost and art found." vigilance; and, by a thousand windings through Italy and Switzerland, at length reached the ruined valleys, and crossed by the now open passes to the Pra. "Grieve no more," said Renee. "You have brought news of uncle Joseph, which has made us all thankful. We had heard that you and he were safe with the good count Stradello." "The count Stradello!” said Claude, raising his head in astonishment. "He was deceased before we reached Calabria, and his property was all confiscated from his widow and five young children, because he refused to see a priest, and died without confession." "Ah!" said poor Louisin. "What false things they did tell who took away our Claire !" Claire!" said Claude, gazing round on all about him-"where is she?" 66 Gone to renounce her religion too!" cried Humbert, for the dregs of his heart were up. 'Humbert," said the old shepherd sternly, as he was not wont to speak, "thy talk this day is a shame to thy religion and thy people!" There is more conceit than religion in the clown," said Robert, with a keen contempt which none but his dark face could show. Humbert sprang towards him in the forgetfulness of rage, and the Provençal's eyes took a fiery glitter. But Victor stepped resolutely between. Brother," he said, laying his hand on Robert's shoulder, "I ask you for our cause sake to let this unruly boy go;" and turning to Humbert, he added: As the appointed chief of the people, I command you to retire to your post in the glen of Angrogna, where you shall stand sentinel for two hours." After the first burst of emotion had subsided, Louisin asked for tidings of uncle Joseph. "I thought," said Claude, covering his face with the skirt of his tattered garment, through which the large tears might be seen falling; "I thought he head had come here. They took us both at Messina, to which we crossed over from Calabria, because of some poor brethren condemned to the galleys there for their religion, and put us in separate prisons; but one told me he had escaped." Then, with a broken voice, poor Claude proceeded to relate his own trials. How a dominican had undertaken to convert him, but lost his temper in the process, and had concluded by denouncing him to misery in this world and the next. How a jesuit had first promised him everything short of a cardinal's hat, and then minutely described all the instruments of torture "at the command of"-for such was the impious phrase" his godliness the archbishop." How, finally, he was brought before the bishop's counsel, asked his name and birth-place, and condemned to the wheel. How, when bound to that engine in the market-place, the same jesuit offered him a full pardon on condition of saying, "I am a catholic"-words which having in a moment of weakness uttered, he was conveyed to the Capuchin convent of Saint Januarius the instructor, where his head was shaved in sign of penitence; it being intended, after a year of novitiate, that he should take the monastic vows.* Claude had at last, however, contrived to escape the brethren's *This, we fear, too faithfully describes the mode in which the unhappy Vaudois were frequently tempted, by their persecutors, to renounce their faith. In some cases-as in the arrative-these attempts were not without effect, when the parties had been weakened by long imprisonment. The tor ture of breaking on the wheel, referred to above, need not be described. It may be interesting, however, to mention another in which this instrument was employed. Francis the fint of France tied several of the reformed faith to a wheel, which revolved over a fire, by which they were scorched, until at length, the cords which bound them being burned, the unhappy sufferers were precipitated into the flames. BIRMINGHAM AND HER MANU- V.-BUTTONS. A HUMOROUS and whimsical writer of the last century entertained his readers with a chapter on button-holes. The humour of the conceit lay in the discrepancy between the dignity of authorship and the trifling nature of the subject. A button, in familiar and figurative phraseology, with some of us, is a term of utter disregard, not to say contempt; not to care a button for a thing, is to have no care at all about it; and not to be worth a button, is to be utterly worthless. In this respect, as in a multitude of others, we are altogether different from our long-tailed friends the Chinese, whose respect for buttons knows no limits, seeing that their claim to the honour and reverence of their fellows rests upon their right to wear them. But, independent of the contempt of the heedless Englishman and the veneration of the reverent Chinese, buttons are buttons; and since they are at everybody's fingers' ends every day in everybody's life; and since we cannot do without them, do what we will; and since, above all, they form one of the staple productions of Birmingham, where many a splendid fortune has been realized by their manufacture; we invite the reader to button up his coat this cold morning and come along with us to see them made. Here we are at the button manufactory. As the metal buttons boast of the greatest antiquity, we must attend to them in the first place. The first process of manufacture, which consists of preparing the metal-a mixture of copper and zinc-casting it in flat moulds, and then rolling it to the required thinness in a rolling mill, the reader will suppose to have been already gone through. The metal, rolled into strips of about five feet in length and as many inches in width, has now to be cut into circular blanks. A female, seated at a small handpress, holds the strip of metal in one hand and the handle of the press in the other; she shifts the metal and depresses the punch some thirty or forty times in a minute, and every time a "blank" or disc of metal is cut from the strip and falls into a drawer beneath. Now the blanks thus cut are so sharp round the edges that they would lacerate the fingers; the next process, therefore, is to give them a round edge, which is done by a young girl seated at a table, who, turning the handle of a machine contrived for the purpose, forces the blanks to revolve between two steel plates having concave edges, which, pressing with great force upon them in their passage, impart a round edge to the button. If the button, instead of being a common flat button, is to have a convex surface, it has now to be subjected to pressure from a press armed with a polished concave surface. This is done with astonishing rapidity, as indeed are all the operations of the hand-press, the use of which is universal in Birmingham. It is by means of the hand-press that the various devices we see on metal buttons are impressed on their surfaces, such as ornamental borders, anchors, masonic emblems, thistles, etc., etc., as well as the makers' names. The press has only to be armed with the appropriate dies, which are changeable at pleasure, and the work proceeds with characteristic rapidity. Some buttons, which are stamped with deeper-cut dies, or have to receive impressions on both sides, require extra force of pressure, and these are stamped by men. Again, a vast proportion of metal buttons, particularly of the larger kind, are hollow, being formed of two pieces of metal, one called the shell and the other the bottom. These are known as shell-buttons, a term probably due to the shape of the larger of the two pieces of metal, which, after it is cut from the strip in the shape of a flat disc, passes through another press, by which it is transformed into a kind of miniature saucer, with its edge raised all round ready to overlap the bottom. The two parts are brought into permanent contact by a single pressure, the overlapping edge clasping the smaller piece in its circular embrace. The button has now to be shanked. The shanks are bought from the shank-maker, who can supply them cheaper than the button-maker can make them. The shanking is performed by a woman, who, laying the buttons on their backs, places the shanks in the centre of each, retaining them in their places by small iron clasps or springs; she now touches the part where the shank and button unite with a little solder, and when a batch of them are thus prepared they are exposed in an oven to a heat which melts the solder, and the work is done. The next process to be considered is the silvering, and after that the gilding. The silvering is thus managed: the buttons are first very summarily and efficiently cleansed by immersion in an acid solution; they are then put into a large earthen pan along with a mixture of common salt, cream of tartar, and silver, and probably something else; here they are violently dashed and jumbled and shaken about for some minutes, at the termination of which violent usage they glisten in all the splendour of new coin, being completely coated with silver in every part. The gilding is a more complicated ceremony, as well as a more expensive one; it may be thus briefly described: the buttons to be gilt, being first properly cleansed in the way above alluded to, are thrown into a vessel of what is called "quickwater," a solution of nitrate of mercury; the mercury precipitates upon the metal and gives the buttons a whitish appearance. They are now, when dry, ready for the operation of the gilder, generally a female, who applies the gold to the parts to be gilded by means of a brush dipped into a kind of paste, formed of mercury and gold-leaf mixed in certain proportions, at a moderate heat. A number of them are now shaken together in a bag to remove any excess of mercury, and are then put into a kind of pan, in which they are subjected to the heat of a small furnace, in which the mercury evaporates, and the button assumes its golden dress. This latter process, when the button is a superior article, is a very careful one, and requires continual watching by the manipulator, who removes the buttons one or two at a time when they are sufficiently baked. Formerly, the mercury used in gilding was wasted and lost; but now, by a skilful arrangement of the flues, it is condensed, collected, and used again: by this ingenious invention there is not only a saving in the expense of manufacture, but the serious danger to the health of the operative from the inhalation of volatilized mercury is obviated. Most buttons which undergo gilding require burnishing; this, the finishing process, is accomplished in the lathe, and of course is the work of a man, occasionally assisted by a boy to turn the wheel. Taking the buttons in his left hand, he inserts one in the hollow of a chuck turned to fit it; an agreeable half-musical twang is heard as he applies the polishing blood-stone to the rapidly revolving surface, and in a few seconds a deep and brilliant polish is produced. In describing the above processes, we have referred merely to such buttons as form the staple of the manufacturer. The reader is not to suppose that the capabilities of the art end here. Buttons may be had at any price which the wearer may choose to pay for them; he may employ the first artists in the land in designing, and pay large sums for die-sinking, and may sport a button worth five pounds if he choose. We were shown patterns exquisite in design and perfect in workmanship, and which, as specimens of art, were worthy to figure in the collections of the medallist. But it is now many years ago since the manu facture of metal buttons received almost a fatal blow from the hand of fashion: the brass and gilt buttons of our boyish days, which we were so pleased to wear, and still more pleased to cut from our coat and use in the play-ground, have almost totally disappeared from the attire of boy and man, and have given place to the cloth-covered or Flo rentine button, the manufacture of which next | of operation; but the principle of pressure in the demands our notice. We have all seen tailors occasionally employed in covering horn buttons with cloth by means of needle and thread. This would appear to be the simplest form of the Florentine button; but though millions of covered buttons are made monthly in Birmingham, the needle and thread have nothing to do in the business, and only come into play when the goods are finished and have to be sewn on cards or coloured paper for sale. It is the hand-press, with its magical punches, tools, and fittings, that, in the hands of young females, accomplishes nearly the whole of the work. At the factory of Messrs. Elliott, in Frederick-street, having climbed a narrow staircase, we are ushered into a long room, where, amid the prattle of children and the occasional singing of a merry tune, a small army of young females are seated at the presses and actively engaged in the various departments of the manufacture. Here one is raining a shower of the blanks which form the upper side of the button into the drawer beneath the press, punching them out of the metal sheet at the rate perhaps of fifty a minute; another, with almost equal rapidity, transforms the flat circles into shells with raised rims; a third is cutting the bottoms, each of which has a perforation with a serrated edge in the centre; a fourth cuts out the paper puffing which is to fill the space between the two pieces of metal; a fifth cuts the fine silken texture or woven pattern which covers the outer surface; and a sixth the piece of coarse black canvass which goes between the paper puffing and the perforated bottom, and which is prevented from being drawn forth by the tug of the tailors' thread by means of the serrated edge which grips it fast-an ingenious contrivance patented by Mr. Elliott. The fixing firmly together of these five pieces which go to form the button is accomplished by the instantaneous pressure which they undergo in a steel matrix, into which the operator places them in proper order, and then, by a touch of the lever, they are combined in a perfect button, the parts of which it is impossible to sever without destroying them all. This last operation appears to a stranger a complete picce of jugglery, and it is not without the trouble of some serious thought upon the matter that the mind obtains a clue as to the means by which it is effected. The result is, of course, dependent upon the ingenious construction of the minute implements brought to bear so forcibly upon the different materials. thick We have above described the manufacture of one, the commonest kind of Florentine buttons; but in this extensive establishment, where little less than a thousand hands are employed, an immense variety of buttons bearing the same generic designation, but differing widely in shape, size, and cost of production, are made. Some are flat, some convex, some round, some elliptic in form; some are covered with exquisite patterns woven at Spitalfelds or Kidderminster, some with plain and Some with figured textures; others again are globular, and others cone-shaped; some are designed to project like flower-buds, and some to droop pendent in the form of acorns. Such an extensive variety in the goods produced must necessarily imply a considerable variation in the modes hand-press is perhaps the basis of the whole industrial process, with some few exceptions, and it may well be some very important modifications. We were struck with the remarkable beauty of some of the designs woven at Spitalfields for button coverings, as well as by the singular and ingenious economy practised by the weavers, who contrive to leave the spaces between the button patterns, which are woven in pieces many yards in length and half a yard wide, uncovered by any portion of the silken web. This rigid economy is carried out in the whole business of button making; the scraps of metal being returned to the furnace, and even the shreds of punched paper to the paper-mill. Shirt buttons and buttons for ladies' use, which are manufactured at this establishment in prodigious quantities-as many as from forty to fifty thousand gross of one kind having been produced in a single week-are made by a process analogous to that above detailed. The chief difference would appear to be, that the metal used is finer, undergoes a process of purification, and is cut into rings instead of flat circles; there are other minor differences which it is not necessary here to notice. They are made with a rapidity which exceeds thought and baffles observation; a round number of children are employed, whose main occupation is to place the several parts of a button together preparatory to their permanent union in the press. A considerable number of females are employed, in a separate chamber, in sewing with the needle the linen buttons on coloured paper in squares of a gross each, after which they are consigned to the dealers. We must glance now for a few moments at the manufacture of pearl buttons, in the making of which above two thousand persons are engaged in Birmingham. The mother-of-pearl, of which they are made, is a substance secreted by the large oysters of the Indian seas; it is bought by the ton in the London market, and taken to Birmingham to be wrought. The first operation, after cleansing the shell, is cutting the blanks, which is done by a tubular saw worked in a lathe; they are then rasped flat on one side, and afterwards turned in the lathe to the required pattern. If they have to be drilled for shirt buttons, this process is performed by women, by means of a drill fixed in the lathe. In many pearl buttons a shank of metal is inserted. As neither solder nor any adhesive composition can be used, an ingenious device is resorted to: the shank is split below its ring into the form of an inverted v, thus a; the turner now cuts, at the back of the button, a hole much wider at the bottom than at the orifice; he inserts the shank at the aperture, and a sharp tap of the hammer causes the A-shaped wire to spread out flat, and shank and button are inseparably fastened together. The next process is the polishing with soap and rotten-stone, which is also done in the lathe. Pearl buttons are made of all sizes, from that of a child's fist, as seen on the shaggy great-coat of a sportsman, to that of a small pea. Besides the buttons already noticed, there is an almost infinite variety of fancy articles, which it would be in vain for us to attempt to describe. Many of these are made of coloured glass, in conjunction with metallic knobs or ornaments; some are exceedingly beautiful in design, others altogether as odd and whimsical. Not a few of these varieties are made at a cost at which no manufacturer who had to pay wages could produce them. The trade in these fancy descriptions of goods is in the hands of numbers of small independent masters, with whom it would be hopeless for the capitalist to compete. The existence of these small masters, who are technically denominated "garret-masters,' is an anomaly in the working world. They are a singular class of beings, who prefer their personal freedom to every other consideration, and will submit to every deprivation except that of liberty. The regular toil of the journeyman under the master's eye, and the discipline of the workshop, are more hateful to them than the lowest poverty. Rather than enter the workshop, they will labour at their own miserable homes for half the remuneration of the regular journeyman; and, as a body, they have done more to reduce the wages of labour in many departments of manufacture than all the vicissitudes of the market or the strikes of the artisans. They are always to be found in numbers in large cities. There can be little short of five thousand of these, working under price at different trades, in the city and suburbs of London. Nearly every department of industry suffers from their practices; that of the cabinet-makers, perhaps, to a greater extent than any other. It is sad to be forced to add, though it is what might be expected, that generally they are the most demoralized class of the industrial community. OLD HUMPHREY ON MITIGATIONS. A GOOD and pleasant subject is a great advantage to an author. When he has to tell his reader unwelcome truths, and to oppose his opinions and his prejudices, it is sad up-hill work; but when, in a kind-hearted spirit, he hits on a subject in which he can take his reader with him, willing to be pleased or profited, it is like going down a gentle slope, all ease and effortless: down such a slope would I now go, discoursing on the subject of mitigations. The great lexicographer tells us that a mitigation is an "abatement of any thing penal, harsh, or painful." I shall apply the word as a reliever or lessener of the mental and bodily afflictions to which humanity is liable. A letter from a friend, which now lies before me, has drawn my thoughts to this subject. Would that I could do it justice! Would that I could comfort the hearts of a thousand afflicted ones, by opening their eyes to discern the manifold mitigations which surround them. One part of the letter runs thus: "Since I have been a cripple, I have become wondrously leg-wise, leg-considerate, and legsympathizing: this is one of the collateral advantages of lameness; but now for the mitigations. Old Humphrey must write a paper on this subject. I have derived much alleviation from acute pains from the electric chain. I get good spring water, and take it freely at night; and twice in that season I take a cup of cocoa, having a fire in my bed-room all night. I have bought a pony phaeton, so that I can ride out daily and get fresh air. Now, if you cannot make a good paper on this subject, I shall think it your own fault, and perhaps give you an unmitigated admonition.' Though my good friend has, in this part of his letter, confined himself to a few only of the things that minister to his comfort, in another part he alludes to other sources of relief, and among them to the kind hearts by which he is surrounded. So far from quailing at his conditional threat, I am hopefully looking forward to a ride with him in his pony phaeton, fearless of his "unmitigated admonition." Rightly considered, this subject of mitigations is a very consolatory one. In the days of my childhood, I was once much interested in listening to the remarks of an American. "Our country," said he, “is much infested with poisonous reptiles, but we are not without our mitigations; for where rattle-snakes abound, rattle-snake herb grows, so that when bitten by the snake we chew the herb and are healed." This struck me at the time as a very merciful provision; but I need not pause to inquire into the truth of the allegation, having a much surer declaration in the holy scriptures of the merciful mitigations of our heavenly Father: "Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee." "He stayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind." "No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." Forty years ago I knew a friend who was then in the full possession of all her faculties. She was wedded to one of the worthy of the world, who sometimes, when giving a lecture on geology to his friends, would playfully observe, in allusion to his partner, who was from Cornwall, that though the specimens of British gems on the table were not without their value, he had in his possession a Cornish diamond of much greater value than them all. When I called upon her, a few weeks ago, I found her quite blind; but she was not without her mitigations. She had learned to read her Bible in raised letters with her finger; she was looking forwards to a glorious abode, where the Lord would be her light, and her God her glory; and she sweetly observed to me, in a spirit of thankfulness, and not of repining, "At my time of life, you know this affliction cannot be a long one." This is the way to meet our trials, to ameliorate our afflictions, to get all the comfort we can from our mitigations, and to make the best of our position. Soon after this interview I visited the chamber of one whom for five and thirty years I had known as a trusty and faithful domestic. Heavily afflicted with cancer, she was, as she believed, on the very verge of an eternal world, but she was not without her mitigations; she had kind friends and necessary comforts; she was perfectly resigned to the righteous will of her heavenly Father, and looked alone, as a sinner, for salvation to the 66 Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world." I left her, saying to myself, "When the waves of Jordan rise around me, may my feet also be found on the Rock of Ages,' and my heart be fixed where true joys are alone to be found." It was but yesterday that an account was |