Many women giving suck freed themselves of the Plague by their children sucking it from them; but some continued well some days, sometimes weeks, and then fell into the disease after their children were dead. The wind blowing westward so long together from before Christmas until July, about seven months, was the cause the Plague begun first at the west-end of the city, as at St. Giles's, St. Martin's, Westminster. Afterwards it gradually insinuated and crept down Holborn and the Strand, and then into the city, and at last to the eastend of the suburbs; so that it was half a year at the west-end of the city before the east-end and Stepney were infected, which was about the middle of July. Southwark, being the south suburb, was infected almost as soon as the west-end. The disease spread not altogether by contagion at first, nor began at only one place, and spread further and further, as an eating, spreading sore doth all over the body, but fell upon several places of the city and suburbs like rain even at the first, as St. Giles's, St. Martin's, Chancery Lane, Southwark, Houndsditch, and some places within the city, as at Procter's Houses. At page 26, the author states himself to have been bold and courageous in the exercise of his profession during the Plague. He says, he rendered himself familiar with the disease, knowing that to do good he must be neither nice nor fearful. He says he drest forty sores a day; and held the pulses of some patients sweating in the bed half a quarter of an hour together, to give judgment, and inform himself of variations. He let blood, gave glisters though but to few, held them up in their beds, to keep them from strangling and choaking half an hour together; commonly suffered their breathing in his face several times when they were dying; ate and drank with them; sat down by their bed-sides, and upon their beds, discoursing with them an hour together when he had time, and stayed by them to see them die, and the manner of their death, and closed up their mouths and eyes; "then," he adds, "if people had nobody to help them (for help was scarce at such a time and place) I helped to lay them forth out of the bed, and afterwards into the coffin, and, last of all, accompanied them to the grave.” At page 86, he says, "Old people that had the disease, many of them were not sick at all; but they that were sick, almost all died. I had one patient four-score and six years old." Of all the common hackney prostitutes of Lutener's Lane, Dog Yard, Cross Lane, Baldwin's Gardens, Hatton Garden, and other places, the common criers of oranges, oysters, fruit, &c.; all the impudent, drunken, drabbing bayles and fellows, and many others of the Rouge Route, there are but few missing. Authors speak of several kinds of Plagues, which took only children, others maids, others young people under thirty; but this of ours took all sorts, yet it fell not very thick upon old people till about the middle or slack of the disease, and most in the decrease and declining of the disease. Cats, dogs, oxen, horses, sheep, hogs, conies, all wild-beasts, hens, geese, pigeons, turkies, &c., and all wild-fowl, were free from infection. "Great doubting and disputing there is in the world,” says this author, "whether the Plague be infectious or catching or not; because some think if it were infectious, it would infect all, as the fire heats, and heats all it comes near; but the Plague leaves as many as it takes thus are they gravelled at such arguments, and cannot solve their doubts; and Van Helmont thinks all people catch it by fear and generally every one is apt to judge by his experience; for if they have been in never so little danger, and yet have escaped without catching it, they presently think the disease not infectious; and if any one may draw his conclusion from this, I have as much reason almost as any to think it is not infectious, having passed through a multitude of continual dangers cum summo vitæ periculo, being employed all day till ten o'clock at night, out of one house into another, dressing sores, and being always in the breath and sweat of patients, without catching the disease of any, through God's tection; and so did many nurses who were in the like danger; yet I count it to be the most subtle infectious disease of any, and that all catch it not by fear neither, (though this doth much, as Helmont thinks,) for then children and confident people would not have the disease; but we see many of them also have it, and children especially, most of any." pro A general flux, with vomiting and griping, followed next summer after the Plague, Anno 1666. This flux seized on all sorts of people. SONNETS. UGO FOSCOLO, My brother, should I ever cease to stray From land to land, and journey to the home To mine own roof, and would embrace, and fail: I share the same; and tempest-worn and lonely PERCHANCE of the sweet quiet of the blest Thou art an emblem in thine hour so dear Is deeply water'd by thy shadowy tear. J. C. IRISH SKETCHES.-No. I. IRISH HISTORIANS. BY LADY MORGAN. It is peculiar to that land of solecisms-Ireland, that presenting a series of historic facts of almost dramatic interest, and of great philosophic importance, she should never have produced a general and well-digested history of her existence as a nation; that having, from her earliest times, possessed in her Seanachies, or genealogists, hereditary chroniclers of the highest local consideration and dignity, she should never have given birth to one eminent historian. Neither her ancient schools nor modern university have redeemed this reproach.1 Ireland however, through her learned and patriotic antiquaries, has always claimed an almost superhuman precocity in letters, arts, and sciences. As a necessary cause for this miraculous superiority, a ready-made language has been assigned to her; and a lineal descendant of Japhet has been supposed to have presented to her his share of the plunder of the confusion of tongues at Babel,-a fact susceptible of a very malicious inference); while Phoenicia, through her Iberian Spanish colonists, bestowed on her letters, philosophy, and commerce, when cotemporáry and neighbouring nations were merged in the darkness, in which the Romans, after the lapse of many centuries, still found them. So much for her Pagan times, as described by her modern Seanachies, Colgan, Keating, O'Flaherty, O'Halloran, O'Connor, Lanigan, &c. &c. &c. But a brighter era was reserved for the Delos of the west-the Island of Apollo, at a time when she became the chosen asylum of persecuted christianity; and, benefitting by its early lights, was distinguished by the higher appellation of the "Island of Saints." Folios have been filled with the names of the pious and the learned, who flourished with an overwhelming fertility in this far-famed period. Eulogiums on the holiness and the acquirements of the Irish sanctology have been multiplied with religious emulation; and every thing has reached us concerning the saints and savans of Erin, excepttheir works. Still, the most erudite and enthusiastical of her modern ecclesiastical writers has declared, that "up to his own times, the history of the church of Ireland had remained unwritten for the long period of 1400 years:" and if the church could not write her own story, it is by no means extraordinary that she should not have troubled herself with that of the people. It is singular that the most eminent of the native Irish antiquaries stop short where fable ends and history begins at the English invasion; and that almost all that has been written since that epoch, either of practical utility, or illustrative of cotemporary manners, was collected by Englishmen, whose offices in the state afforded them the opportunity and means of examining with effect the political and fiscal details of the go "After many inquiries and much research, I found, to my great surprise, that there was no tolerable history of Ireland extant, either in that country or in this.' -Warner's Hist., Preface. 2 Diodorus Siculus, quoted by Dr. Smith. ' Dr. Lanigan, author of " Ecclesiastical History of Ireland." vernment and people. It is sufficient to mention the names of Cambrensis, Hanmer, Campion, Sir Richard Edgecomb, Morryson, Spencer, Hollingshed, Borlase, Sir John Davies, Sir William Petty, Camden, Boate, Usher, Harris, Ware, Smith, Hutchins, Warner, &c. &c. &c. Facts like these may well justify the application to Ireland of some portion of that historic scepticism, which distinguishes the present age; when it is doubted whether Richard the Third was the greatest monster of his times, or Catiline an unprincipled conspirator. And it may be worth while to inquire whether Ireland was indeed superhumanly enlightened in Pagan ages, or supereminently learned in her Christian infancy; and, if not, whether it is for the advantage of the living generation to believe that she was so. In modern philosophy, the wisdom and glory of the past is at a discount and if the antiquities of the houses of Hapsburg and Capet, the contests of popes and emperors, the policy of conclaves, and the sagacity of aulic councils, afford but little to profit by, the Irish must allow themselves to be told, that there is less to regret in the Fes (parliament) of Temor, the wisdom of Ollam Fodlah, or the faites et gestes of Fin M'Cool. The true philosophy of nations is to be dissatisfied with the past, to approve the present, and to look for the best page of their history in the future. The history of man in all times and all ages is pretty nearly alike; and the course of nations, from the rudeness of their origin to the decrepitude of an enervated civilization, is determined by laws derived immediately from the nature of the animal himself. At first, helpless, ignorant, timid, and ferocious,-his instincts are all repulsive: and the earliest social communities are rarely extended beyond the ties of blood. The dawning consciousness of force first awakens the desire of plunder; and some individual of extraordinary courage and energy thus becomes the nucleus of a nation. To the empire of brutal violence succeeds that of intellect, based upon superstition. The discovery that exclusive knowledge is exclusive power, introduces the reign of dogma and opinion, the subtility of the statesman, the craft of the diplomatist, and the wiles of the priest. The developement of industry, arts, letters, and a diffusive knowledge of things practically useful, is a slower and more painful result of social action and reaction; and great and powerful nations have arisen, triumphed, and disappeared, without having attained to that step. To this law, Ireland could form no exception. There is nothing in the known particulars of her early condition, nothing in her moral, political, or geographical position favourable to a precocious civilization; nor does there exist a single monument of power, or of ingenuity, to attest 1 It would be difficult to which country to assign Sir James Ware: he was by the mere accident of birth Irish-but by descent, feeling, and the whole moral structure of his character, he was English. His family was Yorkshire: his father, a hanger-on in the court of Elizabeth, came to Ireland as secretary to the Lord Deputy, Fitzwilliam. He was himself made auditor-general of Ireland under Charles the First, and was called to the Privy Council by his friend and patron the Earl of Stafford, to whom he dedicated all his works, as well as those he compiled of Irish authors. He was a learned and impartial antiquary; and his Annals of Ireland, from the reign of Henry the Seventh to Mary, leave it to be regretted that he did not undertake a general history. her claims, or to counterbalance the improbability—that when the whole civilized world was under the control of one mighty power, she alone should have been unrevealed to the scrutiny, and her superior lights of mind and consequent riches should have escaped its rapacity. It was among the evils attendant upon Ireland's remote position, that she was rather guessed at, than known to the ancients, while her very name sounded like a poetical fiction. The benefits conferred by the invasion of an enlightened and polished nation were denied to her. The Romans never visited her beautiful but profitless shores and it was the consummation of her misfortunes, that the Anglo-Norman adventurers, who made the most permanent inroads on her soil, were almost as barbarous as herself. The Irish toparchs, and their foreign invaders, were too nearly on a par for reciprocal improvement; and the progress of Irish civilization was thus checked by the very means, which to many nations has proved the cause of their rapid prosperity.1 Ireland had also other impediments to contend with, arising from her geographical position. The early history of a people will always be influenced by its proximity or distance from the centre of contemporary civilization. Of all nations, Greece was most favourably placed for a rapid progress in the national developement: Ireland was the very reverse. It stood at the extreme verge of the old world, when the new was yet unknown; and it was lashed by those mighty waters, which were then deemed the ocean boundaries of the earth. The ultima Thule of the ancients was still l'ultima Irlanda of the middle ages. The Cæsars of ancient Rome never saw her; the Pontifical Cæsars of Christian Rome held little or no intercourse with her, because the popes communed only with governments; and Ireland, as a congregation of septs, had no government to commune with. She first became distinguished by papal notice through the English government; and Pope Adrian admitted that he gave the kingdom of Ireland to England, that Henry might extend the power of the Roman Church over that remote land.2 Neither were the accidents of cœlum and solum (as Sir William Petty calls them) indifferent to the developement of Irish civilization. A clime impregnated with the vapours, and disturbed by the storms of the Atlantic, was a fatal physical peculiarity. To this, the soil stood indebted for the brightness of its verdure; but at the same time, also, for the luxuriance and boundless continuity of its woodsthe natural fastnesses of incivilization. "The Irish could not be tamed," it was said, "while the leaves were on the trees."3 How The Saxons were a supe England thus profited by every successive invasion. rior people to the Celts, and the Normans to the Saxons. 2 In 1151, about twenty years before the English invasion, Cardinal Paparo, accompanied by the Bishop of Lismore, came from Rome with the four palliums from Pope Eugene the Third. 3 The peculiarities of the Irish climate were not, however, in all respects unfavourable. The venerable Bede asserts, that the very smell of the land kills all venemous animals, and that the water in which the scrapings of books brought from Ireland (of course written by Irish authors) were infused, had the power of curing the stings of adders. In my own instance, I must confess that I have not found this assertion verified; though it may account for that virulent dislike, which so many critical adders have displayed, to Irish literature in general, |