afford them any other assistance or relief than by sending some troops to drive away the Arabs, and thus delivering a few, who were so fortunate as to get ashore, from the cruel fate which their companions had met with. At last the wind began to fall, and to give some hopes that as many ships might escape as would be sufficient to save the army from perishing by famine, and transport them back to Europe. But these were only hopes; the approach of evening covered the sea with darkness; and it being impossible for the officers aboard the ships which had outlived the storm to send any intelligence to their companions who were ashore, they remained during the night in all the anguish of suspense and uncertainty.-Robertson.

TACITUS, i. c. 70. ii. c. 23, 24, 25.

xxii. c. 19, 20.

LIVY, xxi. c. 49, 50.

WE

BURNING OF MOSCOW.

WHEN he entered the gates of Moscow, Bonaparte, as if unwilling to encounter the sight of the empty streets, stopped immediately on entering the first suburb. His troops were quartered in the desolate city. During the first few hours after their arrival, an obscure rumour, which could not be traced, but one of those which are sometimes found to get abroad before the approach of some awful certainty, announced that the city would be endangered by fire in the course of the night. The report seemed to arise from those evident circumstances which rendered the event probable, but no one took any notice of it, until at midnight, when the soldiers were startled from their quarters by the report that the town was in flames. The memorable conflagration began amongst the coachmakers' warehouses and workshops in the bazaar, or general market, which was the most rich district of the city. It was imputed to accident, and the progress of the flames was subdued by the exertions of the French soldiers. Napoleon who had been roused by the tumult, hurried to the spot, and when the alarm seemed at an end, he retired, not to his former quarters

in the suburbs, but to the Kremlin, the hereditary palace of the only sovereign whom he had ever treated as an equal, and over whom his successful arms had now attained such an apparently immense superiority.

LIVY, xxx. c. 5, 6.

xxvi. c. 27.

Hist. iii. c. 33, 34, 71-73.

TACITUS, Ann. xv. c. 38-40. CESAR, Bell. Gall. vii. c. 24, 25.

WH

PLAGUE OF ATHENS.

HEN it was found that neither the priest nor the physician could retard the spread or mitigate the intensity of the disorder, the Athenians abandoned themselves to despair, and the space within the walls became a scene of desolating misery. Every man attacked with the malady at once lost his courage a state of depression, itself among the worst features of the case, which made him lie down and die without any attempt to seek for preservatives. And though at first friends and relatives lent their aid to tend the sick with the usual family sympathies, yet so terrible was the number of these attendants who perished, "like sheep," from such contact, that at length no man would thus expose himself; while the most generous spirits, who persisted longest in the discharge of their duty, were carried off in the greatest numbers. The patient was thus left to die alone and unheeded. Sometimes all the inmates of a house were swept away one after the other, no man being willing to go near it; desertion on one hand, attendance on the other, both tended to aggravate the calamity. There remained only those who, having had the disorder and recovered, were willing to tend the sufferers. These men formed the single exception to the all-pervading misery of the time-for the disorder seldom attacked any one twice, and when it did the second attack was never fatal.-Grote.

TACITUS, Ann. xvi. c. 13.

AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, xix. c. 4.
LIVY, vii. c. 2.

LUCRETIUS, De Rerum Naturâ, vi. 1138 to end.

XXV. c. 26.

E

PLAGUE OF ATHENS. (Continued.)

LATE with their own escape, they deemed themselves out of the reach of all disease, and were full of compassionate kindness for others whose sufferings were just beginning. It was from them too that the principal attention to the bodies of deceased victims proceeded; for such was the state of dismay and sorrow that even the nearest relatives neglected the sepulchral duties, sacred beyond all others in the eyes of a Greek. Nor is there any circumstance which conveys us so vivid an idea of the prevalent agony and despair as when we read in the words of an eye-witness, that the deaths took place among this close-packed crowd without the smallest decencies of attention that the dead and the dying lay piled one upon another not merely in the public roads but even in the temples, in spite of the understood defilement of the sacred building that half-dead sufferers were seen lying round all the springs from insupportable thirst-that the numerous corpses thus unburied and exposed were in such a condition that the dogs which meddled with them died in consequence, while no vultures or other birds of the like habits ever came near. Those bodies which escaped entire neglect were burnt or buried without the customary mourning, and with unseemly carelessness. In some cases, the bearers of a body, passing by a funeral pile on which another body was burning, would put their own there to be burnt also; or perhaps, if the pile was prepared ready for a body not yet arrived, would deposit their own upon it, set fire to the pile and then depart.-Grote.

LIVY, XXV. c. 26. xli. c. 28. iii. c. 7, 8. iv. c. 30.

LUCRETIUS, De Rerum Naturâ, vi. 1138, sqq.

IT

EARTHQUAKE AT LISBON, A.D. 1755.

T was on the morning of this fatal day, between the hours of nine and ten, that I was sitting down in my room, just finishing a letter, when the papers and table I was writing on began to tremble with a gentle motion, which rather surprised me, as I could not perceive a breath of wind stirring. Whilst I was reflecting what this could be owing to, but without having the least apprehension of the real cause, the whole house began to shake from the very foundation, which at first I imputed to the rattling of several coaches in the main street, which usually passed that way at this time; but on hearkening more attentively, I was soon undeceived, as I found it was owing to a strange, frightful kind of noise under ground, resembling the distant rumbling of thunder. All this passed in less than a minute, and I must confess I now began to be alarmed, as it naturally occurred to me that this noise might possibly be the forerunner of an earthquake, as one I remembered, which had happened about six or seven years ago, in the Island of Madeira, commenced in the same manner, though it did little or no damage.

Upon this I threw down my pen, and started to my feet, remaining a moment in suspense, whether I should stay in the apartment or run into the street, as the danger in both places seemed equal; and still flattering myself that this tremor might produce no other effects than such inconsiderable ones as had been felt at Madeira; but in a moment I was roused from my dream, being stunned by a horrible crash, as if every edifice in the city had tumbled down at once. The house I was in shook with such violence, that the upper stories immediately fell, and though my apartment (which was the first floor) did not then share the same fate, yet everything was thrown out of its place, in such a manner that it was with no small difficulty I kept my feet, and expected nothing less than to be soon crushed to death, as the walls continued rocking to and fro in the frightfullest manner, opening in several places; large stones falling down on every side from the cracks, and the ends

of most of the rafters starting out from the roof. To add to this terrifying scene, the sky in a moment became so gloomy that I could now distinguish no particular object: it was an Egyptian darkness, indeed, such as might be felt; owing, no doubt, to the prodigious clouds of dust and lime raised from so violent a concussion, and, as some reported, to sulphurous exhalations; but this I cannot affirm; however, it is certain, I found myself almost choked for near ten minutes.-Davy.

S soon as the gloom began to disperse, and the violence of

As soon as the gloom pegay much first I

the shock seemed pretty much abated, the first object I perceived in the room was a woman sitting on the floor with an infant in her arms, all pale and trembling. I asked her how she got hither, but her consternation was so great she could give me no account of her escape. I suppose that when the tremor first began, she ran out of her own house, and finding herself in such imminent danger from the falling stones, retired into the door of mine, which was almost contiguous to hers, for shelter, and when the shock increased, which filled the door with dust and rubbish, ran upstairs into my apartment, which was then open: be it as it might, this was no time for curiosity. I remember the poor creature asked me, in the utmost agony, if I did not think the world was at an end: at the same time she complained of being choked, and begged, for God's sake, I would procure her a little drink. Upon this I went to a closet where I kept a large jar of water (which you know is sometimes a pretty scarce commodity in Lisbon), but finding it broken in pieces, I told her she must not now think of quenching her thirst but of saving her life, as the house was just falling on our heads, and if a second shock came, would certainly bury us both. I bade her take hold of my arm,