We have lately read in telegrams an ominous word which always conveys indistinct but dreadful impressions, but which seemed to be exciting very real alarm in Europe six weeks ago, an alarm which has been recently mitigated but has not absolutely died out. That word is "plague." The pestilence has certainly been causing panic in Russia, and that panic has naturally spread to Anstiia, Wo presume that the word plague is chiefly connected in the minds of Englishmen with the scenes which Defoe has do-scribed with such astounding minuteness and vividness, and with certain imitations of his narrative by sonsation novelists. But the fact that we associate the plague with fictitious personages and an unhistorical history, must not blind us to the fact that it is a real visite of dire malignancy, and that a vague rumour of its manifestation in any portion of the world is ground for alarm. There is little doubt that the plague now active in Russia is the same disease as the plague which ravaged London in 1665. Of the general symptoms of the disease, an old writer says, "Among these wore spots of different colours, biccough, vomiting, carbuncles, shortness of breath, drow-sines and thirstiness, contraction of the jaws, and large and extended rumours. This plague was ushered in with seven months dry weather and westerly winds. It fell first upon the highest grounds." And it seems settled that the pestilence which forms such a ghastly landmark in English History was the same disease which depopulated the Roman Empire in the reign of Justinian. This disease had its origin, according to Gibbon, "in the neighbour. hood of Pelusium, between the Serbonian and the eastern channel of the Nile, "The infection," says the historian, "was sometimes announced by the visions of a distempered fancy, and the victim despaired as soon as he bad of an invisible spectre. But the greater number, in their beds, in the streets, in their usual occupation, were surprised by a slight fever; so slight, indeed, that neither the pulse nor the colour of the patient gave any signs of the approach ing 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 arm pits, and under the ear, and when these rumours were opened, they were found to con. tain a coal-black substance of the size of lentil. If they.came to a just swelling and suppuration, the patient was saved by this kind and natural discharge of the morbid humour. Bat if they continued hard and dry, a mortification quickly ensued, and the fifth day was commonly the term of his life."
There were several epidemics of the same pestilence during the middle ages in Europe, Asia, and Africa,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.