this dreadful scourge of mankind has always been, and continues to be, contagious, in spite of every opinion to the the contrary.

In turning over the classic pages of our celebrated historian of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," in the seventh volume of the octavo edition, beginning at page 418, I find the following observations on this truly serious subject. Having expatiated upon the deplorable consequences of earthquakes, and the still increasing calamities which are at such an awful moment heaped upon the unfortunate sufferers, by the vices and passions of mankind, thus released from the fear of punishment, and having probably that of Lisbon, in his eye, tho' he does not particuJarly mention it, he thus proceeds:

เ

Ethiopia and Egypt have been stigmatised in every age as the original source and seminary of the plague. In a damp, hot, stagnating air, this African fever is generated from the putrefaction of animal substance, and especially from the swarms of locusts, not less destructive to mankind in their death than in their lives. The fatal disease which depopulated the earth in the time of Justinian and his successors, first appeared in the neighbourhood of Pelusium, between the Serbonian bog and the eastern channel of the Nile. From thence, having as it were a double path, it spread to the east over Syria, Persia, and the Indies, and penetrated to the west, along the coast of Africa, and over the continent of Europe. In the spring of the second year, Constantinople, during three or four months, was visited by the pestilence; and Procopius, who observed its progress and symptoms with the eyes of a physician, has emulated the skill and diligence of Thucydides in the description of the plague of Athens. The infection was sometimes announced by the visions of a distempered fancy; and the victim despaired as soon as he had heard the menace and felt the stroke of an invisible spectre. But the greater number, in their beds, in the streets, in their usuai occupation, were surprised by a slight fever; so slight, indeed, that nei

ther the pulse nor the colour of the patient gave any signs of the approaching danger. The same, the next, or the succeeding day, it was declared, by the swelling of the glands, particularly those of the groin, of the armpits, and under the ear; and, when these buboes or tumors were opened, they were found to contain a coal or black substance of the size of a lentil. If they came to a just swelling and supuration, the patient wa saved by this kind and natural discharge of the morbid humour. But, if they continued hard and dry, a mortification quickly ensued, and the fifth day was commonly the term of his life. The fever was often accompanied by lethargy or delirium; the bodies of the sick were covered with black pustules or carbuncles, the symptoms of immediate death; and, in the constitutions too feeble to produce an eruption the vomiting of blood was followed by the mortification of the bowels. To pregnant women the plague was generally mortal; yet, one infant was drawn alive from his dead mother, and three mothers survived the loss of their infected foetus. Youth was the most perilous season, and the female sex was less susceptible than the male; but every rank and profession was attacked with indiscriminate rage; and many of those who escaped were deprived of the use of their speech, without being secure from a return of the disorder.

The physicians of Constantinople were zealous and skilful, but their art was baffled by the various symptoms and pertinacious vehemence of the disease: the same remedies were productive of contrary effects, and the event capriciously disappointed their prognostics of death or recovery. The order of funerals and right of sepulchres were confounded; those who were left without friends or servants lay unburied in the streets, or in their desolate houses; and a magistrate was authorized to collect the promiscuous heaps of dead bodies, to transport them by land or water, and to inter them in deep pits beyond the precincts of the city. Their own daữger, and the prospect of public distress, awakened some remorse in the minds

of the most vicious of mankind,-the confidence of health again revived their passions and habits. But philosophy must disdain the observation of Procopius, that the lives of such men were guarded by the peculiar favour of Fortune or Providence. He forgot, or perhaps he secretly recollected, that the plague had touched the person of Justinian himself; but the abstenious diet of the emperor may suggest, as in the case of Socrates, a more rational and bonourable cause for his recovery. During his sickness, the public consternation was expressed in the habits of the citizens, and their idleness and despondence occasioned a general scarcity in the capital of the East.

Contagion is the inseparable symptom of the plague, which, by mutual respiration, is transfused from the surfeited persons to the lungs and stomach of those who approach them. While philosophers believe and tremble, it is singular that the real danger should have been denied by a people most prone to vain and imaginary terrors (the French). Yet, the fellow-citizens of Procopius were satisfied, by some short and partial experience, that the infection could not be gained by the closest conversation; and this persuasion might support the assiduity of friends and physicians in the care of the sick, whom inhuman prudence would have condemned to solitude and despair. But the fatal security, like the predestination of the Turks, must have aided the progress of the contagion ; and those salutary precautions, to which Europe is indebted for her safety, were unknown to the government of Justinian. No restraints were imposed on the free and frequent intercourse of the Roman provinces; from Persia to France the nations were mingled and infected by wars and emigrations, and the pestilentiai odour, which lurks for years in a bale of cotton, was imported, by the abuse of trade, into the most distant regions. The mode of its propagation is explained by the remark of Procopius himself,-that it always spread from the sea-coast to the inland countries: the most sequestered islands

187

and mountains were successively visited; the places which had escaped the fury of its first passage, were alone exposed to the contagion of the ensuing year. The winds might diffuse that subtle venom; but, unless the atmosphere be previously disposed for its reception, the plague would soon expire in the cold or temperate climates of the earth. Such was the universal corruption of the air, that the pestilence, which burst forth in the fifteenth year of Justinian, A.D. 542, was not checked or alleviated by any difference of the seasons. In time its first malignity was abated and dispersed; the disease alternately languished and revived; but it was not till the end of a calamitous period of fifty-two years that mankind recovered their health, or the air resumed its pure and salubrious quality. No facts have been preserved to sustain an account, or even a conjecture, of the numbers that perished in this extraordinary mortality. I only find that, during three months, five, and at length ten thousand people died each day at Constantinople; that many cities of the East were left vacant; and that, in several districts in Italy, the harvest and the vintage withered on the ground. The triple scourge of war, pestilence, and famine afflicted the subjects of Justinian; and his reign is disgraced by

visible decrease of the human species, which has never been repaired, in some of the fairest countries of the globe.'

In a note he adds, that it is not wholly inadmissible to believe, one hundred millions of persons fell victims to this contagion in the Roman empire.

Surely, no one who reads this account of the plague would wish to see the rash experiment tried of repealing out Quarantine Laws; but rather admit the superior policy of putting the crews of ships, suspected of infection, to the inconvenience of forty days' non-intercourse with the shore, than risk the destruction of a whole country by the introduction of so unmitigable a scourge. I know not upou what foundation exactly the arguments are built to shew the plague is not conta

gious; I contend, they ought at least to amount to demonstration, and even then it would be dangerous to break down all at once the bulwarks upon which our health and safety have for so many years past depended, or appeared to depend. True wisdom will ever point out the necessity of adopting the safe side of the question, by leaving nothing to chance.

The subject is of vital importance to the welfare of the community, and is well deserving of numerous decisive experiments and extensive discussion, before any departure from the established laws and regulations be suffered to take place. Even the very prejudices of mankind, in their individual concerns have a tendency to lead them to the side of safety; as may be well exemplified by an anecdote of our tyrant, King

Henry the Eighth; and which, though not bearing upon the present subject, I may venture to mention, as illustrative of the inconsistency of the human mind, when it comes to its last trial; it will naturally suggest reflections with regard to the strange contrarieties of his temper and conduct. By his will, he left money for masses to be said for delivering his soul from purgatory; and, though he destroyed all those institutions established by his ancestors and others for the benefit of their souls, and had even left the doctrine of purgatory doubtful in all the articles of faith which he promulgated during his latter years, he yet was determined, when the hour of death was approaching, to take care at least of his own future repose, and to adhere to the safer side of the question. J. A.

scrawl may ever fall into other hands besides my own, I know not. If not, the knowledge of my crimes and misery will go with me to the grave; yet I should wish it otherwise, because a relation so fatal as mine might be of use to others, who, like myself, are the slaves of passion. A true and faithful relation it shall be in every particular, because I have sworn to myself to conceal nothing. Names only are altered; not from any fear of the world's reproach falling upon myself, to whom it could do no greater injury than has already befallen me; but because I am unwilling that others who were innocent, should come in for a share in that reproach.

I was born in a village within a few miles of Bourdeaux, of respectable, though not rich parents. My father had been in trade, and was unfortu nate, and having saved as much from the wreck of his fortune as would support his family with tolerable comfort in privacy, he wisely resolved not to

of making it better. He accordingly retired to a small country house, with my mother, myself, and four daughters, and there devoted his life to the care and education of his children.

Having learned by experience, that the commerce of France was not in so flourishing a state as to secure wealth to every speculator, and as his circumstances were not such as could authorise his sending me into the army, he determined to breed me up to the profession of medicine, hoping that I might soon acquire a competency, and so be enabled to provide a home for my mother and sisters, in case he should die before them. Would to God he had bound me apprentice to the meanest mechanical trade, or had suffered me to follow my own inclination, and gone as a volunteer into the service. But I am digressing. With this view I was instructed in the learned languages, and at the age of seventeen was sent to Paris for the purpose of studying my profession. O that I

student of physic was converted into the polite and fashionable Cornet Dumain of the 16th hussars.

About a week after this change had taken place, I was conducted by my friend to the house of Madame St. Omar. It was a fete in honour of her daughter's birth-day, who had just completed her seventeenth year. The apartments were brilliantly illuminated, and crowded with beauty and fashion; but from the moment of my entering them I saw nothing save Julia St. Omar. I was introduced to her by St. Pierre himself as his preserver, and she extended her hand to me with a smile-O such a smile. Years have elapsed, but it has never faded from my memory. I danced with her; St. Pierre was still too ill to dance; I spoke to her of fifty things, but my conversation returned always to the same subject. I watched her during the whole evening, and once or twice saw a blush upon her cheek when our eyes chanced to meet. I beheld St. Pierre pay her the most marked attention, and a throb of jealousy beat at my heart; but I repressed it, because I thought she received his attentions with coldness. I returned to my lodgings madly in

love.

"You remember that lovely girl with whom you danced," said St. Pierre, as we sat together next morning at breakfast.

"Remember her!" cried I; "I shall never forget her." St. Pierre looked grave. "She is to be mine, my friend, on Monday." "Your's on Monday!" cried I, in a voice of anguish. "Yes, Dumain," replied he. "Does it grieve you to learn that your friend is to be so soon made happy with the hand of the woman he adores?" "Oh, no, no!" I replied, scarce articulately; "I am happy, very happy, to hear you are so fortunate."

I rose and left the room, for I could not dissemble to him, and walked out into the air to cool my brain and resolve upon something. To be unfaithful to my benefactor was impossible. I determined to stifle my passion in the bud, see her only once

more, and set off next day to join my regiment now on the Spanish frontier. Oh! that I had gone without seeing her.

In the evening I went to Madame St. Omar's, without communicating my intention to St. Pierre. Madame St. Omar was from home, but Julia was within. It was a balmy evening in May-she was sitting in an apartment which commanded a beautiful prospect of the garden of the Thuilleriesthe casement was open, and the twilight was approaching. I besought her to sing, and accompany herself upon the harp. She did so. The song was of love, and I heard her voice tremble at that part where the poet says,

"Even in another's arms,

I'll think of thee alone."

I was leaning over her entranced. It was too much for me. The arm which rested upon her chair slid insensibly round her waist, and I told my fatal secret. Oh, God! what shall I say were my feelings when I found my love returned. At first they were of rapture alone; but the next moment the recollection of my friend and benefactor came upon me, and I shrunk from her in dismay. She looked horror-struck. "But you are another's," I cried, "and that other is my friend. Oh, Julia, let us be unhappy, but we shail never be guilty!" So saying, I snatched up my hat and hurried out of the house.

I flew to my lodgings, but my conscience struck me so, I could not face St. Pierre. Fortunately he was out, and was not to return till late next day. I sent him a hurried note, mentioning that I had received a sudden order to join; and leaving it upon his table next morning, I threw myself into a voiture, and without once stopping to rest, arrived at Bayonne.

Here I passed some weeks in great uneasiness of mind, which was not relieved either by the silly conversation of my brother officers, or the account of St. Pierre's marriage, which he in due time communicated. This last piece of intelligence, indeed, came upon