and that no one cherished any regard for his neighbour (even relations seldom or never holding any intercourse with each other, or, if they did, keeping their distance the while), the affliction engendered so terrible a panic in the breasts of both. men and women that brother deserted brother, the uncle his nephew, the sister her brother, and oftentimes the wife her husband; ay-and this is yet more extraordinary, if not absolutely incredible-fathers and mothers refused with loathing to tend or even visit their own children, as though there were no tie whatever between them. As a necessary consequence of such indifference, the sick of either sex, whose name was legion, were left to the charity of friends-and friends of this kind were rare- -or to the avarice of servants, who did their work very inadequately for enormous wages, and even on these terms but few were to be had. Moreover, they were invariably coarse-minded men and women, as a rule utterly inexperienced, and serving hardly any other purpose than that of giving the patients what they asked for, and seeing when they died; in many cases, too, the end of their employment was that they lost both life and lucre. Owing to this desertion on the part of neighbours, relations, and friends, and to the scarcity of nurses, many died who, peradventure, had they met with proper attention, had escaped; whereas from the lack of suitable attendance, which the sick were unable to procure, and the virulence of the plague itself, the number of those who perished day and night in the city was astounding to the ear, and yet more so to the eye. Under such circumstances, what wonder if various customs, contrary to those formerly in vogue, obtained among the survivors ?

"It was the practice then, as now, when a death occurred, for the women-relations and neighbours to assemble within doors and mourn with the family, while in like manner in front of the house the male relations were joined by their friends and fellow-citizens in considerable numbers; then, in proportion to the quality of the deceased, clergy came, and the dead man was carried on the shoulders of his peers, with all the funeral pomp of taper and chant, to the church he had selected before his death. But as the plague waxed more and more virulent, these usages were in great measure, if not entirely, abandoned, and new ones adopted in their room. For not only did many

persons die with but few women about them to make lamentation, but a vast number perished without a single witness of their end, and rare, indeed, were the deathbeds to which were accorded the wailings and bitter tears of kinsfolk; instead whereof, for the most part, laughter and jest and festive merrymaking became the rule; and the women, neglecting to a great extent the pious offices which it is the part of their sex to fulfil, and with a view, as they fancied, to their own safety, easily fell into the new fashion. It was seldom that a body was followed to the church by more than ten or twelve neighbours, and even then they were no honourable and illustrious fellow-citizens who supported the bier, but a species of gravediggers, improvised among the lower classes, and nicknamed Sextonets, made a bargain for the performance of the office. These men hurried along the streets behind four or five clergy, with few tapers and sometimes none at all, and carried the body in most cases, not to the church which the deceased had selected, but to that which chanced to be nearest. There the priests, with the assistance of these Sextonets, deposited it in the first unoccupied grave that presented itself, without stopping to perform a long and solemn funeral service. In the case of the lower, and indeed in great measures of the middle, classes, the wretchedness was even more extreme; for, remaining as they did indoors from poverty, or hope of escape, or at any rate never venturing beyond the immediate neighbourhood of their dwellings, they sickened daily by thousands, and inasmuch as they were neither nursed, nor tended in any respect whatever, perished hopelessly. Many, indeed, died day and night in the public streets, while others, albeit they certainly drew their last breath within doors, yet previously, by the stench which proceeded from their bodies, had convinced their neighbours that the hand of death was upon them; with such persons and those who were actually dying the place literally

swarmed.

"The neighbours almost universally observed one and the same rule, as well from fear of the harm that might befall them from the corruption of the dead bodies, as from a feeling of charity towards the dead themselves. With their own hands, and the assistance of certain bearers when they

were to be had, they dragged the bodies of the deceased from the houses, and placed them before the street doors, where, especially in the morning, they might be seen in countless numbers by anyone going the rounds. Then they brought biers, or in default of these even tables, and placed the corpses thereon, a single bier often sufficing for two or three bodies, and in very many instances husband and wife, two or three brothers, or father and son, were in this manner borne away. Many and many a time, when two priests were going with a single cross to conduct a funeral, three or four biers, supported by the hired bearers, would follow in the train, and where they had expected to bury a single body, they found six or eight, and sometimes even more, waiting their ministrations. Not, however, that these funerals were the scene of tears, or gorgeous with procession and taper in honour of the departed. No; things had come to such a pass, that men thought no more of their fellow-creatures who died than nowadays we should think of so many goats; and it was made abundantly evident that the comparatively rare and slight calamities which, following in the natural course of events, men, be they ever so wise, cannot be taught to bear patienly, now when multiplied and aggravated to such an enormous extent, even fools learned to regard with calmness, if not with absolute

indifference.

"The graveyards not sufficing for the reception of so vast a number of bodies, daily, hourly, thronging the churches, and a strong wish prevailing to give to each, in accordance with ancient usage, a recognised resting-place, immense ditches were dug and used as church cemeteries, the actual churchyards being full. In these chance comers were buried by hundreds, huddled together, like a cargo, bale upon bale, in a ship's hold, with a thin layer of earth between each, until the top of the ditch was reached.

"Not to enter into further details of miseries now happily past, I may add that, while this fatal season was running its course in the city, the surrounding country was in no wise exempt. For there, not to mention the castles which, as regards the pestilence, were the city in miniature—the poor wretched labourers and their families, scattered among

their

the little towns and villages, and far from all aid of physician and nurse, perished like cattle, day and night alike, on the roads, on their patches, or in their humble dwellings Wherefore, after their own fashion, the survivors here, as in the city, became utterly demoralized, and took no thought for property or their occupation. But, as though expecting to die each day as it dawned, they busied themselves, not in promoting the increase of their flocks and herds, in tending their crops, or in furthering the fruits of their past labours, but in consuming all the produce which they had ready to hand. And thus the oxen and the asses, the sheep and the goats, the swine and the poultry-ay, and man's most faithful companion, the very dogs were driven away from their proper habitations, and left to range at will over the fields, where still smiled the corn ungarnered, unreaped, abandoned. Many of them, obeying a natural instinct, after feeding all day, used of their own accord to come back sated, at night, to their stalls and styes.

were

“To return to the city. What more can be said save that so bitter was the vengeance of heaven, and in some sort so great the heartlessness of men, that between the months of March and July, what with the virulence of the plague itself, and the fact that, owing to the panic which possessed the minds of those who were yet in health, so many of the sick ill nursed or actually deserted, more than a hundred thousand human beings, according to common belief, perished within the walls of Florence? Perhaps before the calamity no one would have believed that the city numbered so many inhabitants in all. Ah! how many a proud palace and princely pile, once alive with lords and ladies and lacqueys, was swept of its inmates down to the lowest scullion! How many a famous line and splendid inheritance was left bereaved of its lawful heir! How many gallant men and lovely women were cut off in their prime! How many a merry youth, whom Galen, Hippocrates, and Æsculapius themselves would have pronounced to be in the heyday of health, breakfasted with his kinsfolk, or his clubfellows, and supped with his forefathers in the other world!"

MRS. ASHTON.

CHAPTER I.

THE ROW.

|WO young men, on a lovely morning in June, were lounging in the Row, criticizing the faces and toilettes of the gay crowd of blooming or passez women, whose sole aim in life seemed to be "frivolling" and flirting.

"How Spanish that girl looks!-what a sweet face!" Arthur Ashton exclaimed to his companion, Captain Fane. "What! that fuzzy red-wigged woman, like a French Judas Iscariot?" Fane enquired, adding: "There's a friend of mine, Miss Neville, now,-I call that a sweet face; see, the lovely blonde, in brown and yellow. "Elle est blonde, elle est ronde, pour tout le monde, excepté moi," he hummed sotto voce. Then noticing the absorbed look of his friend, and following his admiring glance, he exclaimed, "Ah! now I see the Spanish Dona, she's Lady Cecilia Sefton's niece, or daughter, or ward."

"Can you introduce me ?" Ashton eagerly asked.

"Hit, by Jove! Yes-if I see her pretty and faded ladyship."

The young men passed up and down the Row and discovered "l'objet," as Fane remarked, being fond of airing off his French, sitting under the shadow of a leafy elm and a large crimson sunshade. Lady Cecilia was well-dressed, but a less airy style would have been more becoming than the butterfly costume she affected, a pale cream colour picked out with crimson, a large coarse straw bonnet à la Basket, covering an edifice of fluffy fair curls, giving her back view a juvenile look.

Arthur Ashton's dark-haired beauty was near her; hastily throwing away his cigar he followed his friend.

Lady Cecilia received the young men graciously, and presenting Mr. Ashton to her niece, absorbed Captain Fane's