general effects of the disease on the whole animal creationthe desolation is complete, and weighs upon the heart.

"Non lupus insidias explorat ovilia circum,

Nec gregibus nocturnus obambulat: acrior illum
Cura domat. Timidi damæ, cervique fugaces
Nunc interque canes et circum tecta vagantur.
Jam maris immensi prolem, et genus omne natantum
Littore in extremo, ceu naufraga corpora, fluctus
Proluit; insolitæ fugiunt in flumina phocæ.
Interit et curvis frustra defensa latebris
Vipera, et attoniti squamis adstantibus hydri.
Ipsis est aër avibus non æquus, et illæ
Præcipites alta vitam sub nube relinquunt.

*

Balatu pecorum, et crebris mugitibus amnes
Arentesque sonant ripæ collesque supini.

Jamque catervatim dat stragem atque aggerat ipsis
In stabulis turpi dilapsa cadavera Tabo." &c.*

Georg. iii. 537.

*Of this, we will give Dryden's translation; although to quote such English translations as we have of the classics in general, and then point the passage out to admiration, is much as if we should strip a fine person of his splendid and graceful vestments, in which he is bearing himself with dignified ease, clothe him in a mean and ill-made dress, hit him a few blows which make him go lame, and then insist upon his dancing for the amusement of spectators.

"The nightly wolf, that round th' enclosure prowl'd,

To leap the fence, now plots not on the fold:
Tam'd with a sharper pain, the fearful doe
And flying stag amidst the greyhounds go:

And round the dwellings roam of man, their fiercer foe.
The scaly nations of the sea profound,

Like shipwreck'd carcases are driv'n aground;
And mighty phocæ, never seen before

In shallow streams, are stranded on the shore.
The viper dead within her hole is found;
Defenceless was the shelter of the ground.
The water-snake, whom fish and paddocks fed,
With staring scales lies poison'd in his bed :
To birds their native heav'ns contagious prove,
From clouds they fall, and leave their souls above.

Ovid has closely imitated Lucretius and Virgil, and in his view of the subject there is little which is new, except that he has combined the two diseases of men and cattle. The ancients had so many superstitious feelings connected with the burial of the dead, that a plague must have been a more awful thing to them than even in modern times. The scrupulous care which was employed by the ancients, more particularly the Greeks, after a battle, to collect the dead, and what ceremonials were performed on this occasion, are well known. In Athens, a neglect of this kind has brought down ruin on the heads of the most successful commanders, and a whole series of victories tarnished and, indeed, rendered abominable and hateful by the unavoidable loss of a corpse. The funeral ceremonies were of the most elaborate and sacred nature; the most lavish expenses were bestowed upon them, and the nicest care exacted in order to prevent the occurrence of any thing ill-omened, disrespectful, or incomplete. It was deemed, that there was something defiling in the presence of a corpse, and a death, though an accidental one, in a temple, was nearly an inexpiable offence. We may gather how these feelings of deep and rooted superstition, unknown to us, were offended, when their funerals were either absolutely unperformed or, at best, hurried over; when heaps of unburied carcases filled their streets, and the very altars and pavements of their temples were, in every corner, violated by the impure touch of death. Great stress is laid upon this circumstance in all the poets we have mentioned. Thucydides is actuated with a vast sense of its importance; and it is with him a proof of the licentiousness incident to a plague, that men violated the sanctity of the funeral pile; "For when one had made a funeral pile, another, getting before him, would throw on his dead, and give it fire. And while one was burning, another would come, and having cast thereon him whom he carried, go his way again."-(Hobbes.)

"What could I do? what succour? what resource?

The rivers and their banks, and hills around,
With lowings and with dying bleats resound.
At length, she strikes an universal blow;
To death at once whole herds of cattle go:
Sheep, oxen, horses, fall; and heap'd on high
The diff'ring species in confusion lie."

With pious sacrilege, a grave I stole :

With impious piety that grave I wrong'd."

Young.

Lucretius has remarked the indecorous haste of the funerals, and the absence of the usual pageants, in a forcible line.

"Incomitata rapi certabant funera vasta."

Ovid has expanded the idea of Thucydides.

"None o'er their urns with decent honors grieve,
Nor could the graves the waste of death receive;
Or they unbury'd on the ground are spread,
Or burn without the dowry of the dead;
All decency is lost, and sense of shame,
With rude dispute their neighbour's pile they claim,
And turn to ashes in another's flame.

None now the pious mourners' place supply,
And sons and fathers unlamented die;

The ghosts of young and old all stray in air,

And meet their wand'ring kindred shadows there:
The dead a larger space for burials claim,
Nor could the trees supply the fun'ral flame.”

Ovid. Met. vii.

In modern times comparatively little importance is attached to the pageantry and pomp of interment, the feelings with which we regard death are only those natural to beings who must all die,--the dead body of an indifferent person is indeed turned away from, in some measure, with disgust, for when life, the embalmer, is gone, what is it but corruption? Towards the body of a friend much of personal regard is continued, and now that it is helpless and unable to execute its own wishes, we take upon ourselves that tender care of it which its owner himself would have extended over it. There is, indeed, thought and care about a grave, but we extend the notions of life to the repose of death. That which fills the mind, while living, with images of quiet, stillness, retirement, nay, even comfort, is chosen as a suitable and desirable place for our last abode. We associate ideas of melancholy with a foreign burial, and even in death we love to assemble in a family circle. pains of death have been half removed by an assurance of mouldering among kindred dust. Pope has touched this string in his "Elegy on the Death of an unfortunate Lady."

The

"By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs compos'd,

By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd,

By strangers honour'd, and by strangers mourn'd!"

And in Mickle's translation of Camoëns there is an affecting passage which hangs on these life-in-death feelings:

each dreary mournful hour we gave

Some brave companion to a foreign grave:
A grave, the awful gift of every shore!
Alas! what weary toils with us they bore!
Long, long endear'd by fellowship in woe,
O'er their cold dust we give the tears to flow,
And in their hapless lot forebode our own,
A foreign burial and a grave unknown."

In the great plague of Marseilles we find, at one time, the whole city in a state of rebellion against the magistrates for a grave. The clergy, out of a regard for the living, would not permit the vaults of the churches to be used for this purpose. But when the streets became impassable from the heaps of dead bodies, and the labourers employed in clearing them away sunk down as dead as their burdens, the city was in an uproar, broke open the churches, tore up the vaults, and filled them with their dead.

"Omnia, denique, sancta deûm delubra replerat
Corporibus Mors exanimis, onerataque passim
Cuncta cadaveribus cœlestum templa manebant.”*

Lucretius.

During the plague of Athens there was a more than ordinary reason for this violation of the temples. The city was, at the same moment, besieged by an enemy without, while it was destroyed by this scourge within. All the inhabitants of the country had fled to the city for refuge, and it was thus pent up in a crowded town, dwelling together in stifling booths, built for the occasion in the squares, and the open places about the

* "At length the temples of the gods themselves
Chang'd into charnels, and their sacred shrines
Throng'd with the dead."

Mason Good.

temples, and even in them, the disease commenced his attack upon the poor beleaguered population. In modern times, as has been mentioned, the accumulation of dead bodies in the streets has been so great as to render them impassable, and absolutely to cause the removal of the remaining inhabitants to less incumbered districts. What must it have been then in Athens, crammed with inhabitants as it was at this unfortunate moment? In the ancient cities there was another great cause of filling the highways with the dead and dying,—the fountains and conduits, which always adorned them, attracted multitudes of poor wretches who were raving under the tortures of thirst,— and here they tumbled one over another until death, not the water, relieved their pains

"And now each sex, regardless of their shame,

Press to the brooks and streams to quench their flame :
There hanging o'er the brims, in bitter strife,
At once they both extinguish thirst and life.
Thus in the streams their dying bodies sink,
And still those streams the rash survivors drink."

Ovid. Met. vii.

Wandering and restlessness is another characteristic of this calamity, which tended to crowd the streets with corpses. Neglected sufferers, who were the million, when delirium supervened, would struggle into the streets to die. This, too, Ovid has noticed.

"Here from his bed one wretch uneasy flies,
One rolls along the ground too weak to rise;
Each from his house, as fate were there, withdraws
And blames the place, unknowing of the cause.
There might you see an half-dead carcase crawl
Long as he could with fainting steps, then fall;
Some stretch upon the ground with wailing cries,
And some in dying roll their weary'd eyes;

Others their languid arms to heav'n up cast,

Surpris'd by death, they pray, and breathe their last."

Ovid. Met. vii.

The Bishop of Rochester has most strangely fretted and interlaced the sober and solemn account of Thucydides, in his Pindaric on the Plague of Athens, with his own fancies. In the manner of Cowley he has filled his descriptions with the most outrageous conceits and the wildest similes. To give a specimen, he says that the disease first shewed itself in the head and eyes, and he thus expresses the fact :