d died of the disease at Wick
rather more than a month previous, and the clothes known to have been in
contact with the body were burnt by the Wick authorities in the open
air. He had, however, a brother on the spot, who had stealthily
appropriated some of the better pieces of dress; and these he brought
home with him in a chest; though such was the dread with which he
regarded them that for more than four weeks he suffered the chest to lie
beside him unopened. At length, in an evil hour, the pieces of dress
were taken out, and, like the "goodly Babylonish garment" which wrought
the destruction of Achan and the discomfiture of the camp, they led, in
the first instance, to the death of the poor imprudent fisherman, and to
that of not a few of his townsfolk immediately after. He himself was
seized by cholera on the following day; in less than two days more he
was dead and buried; and the disease went creeping about the streets and
lanes for weeks after--here striking down a strong man in the full
vigour of middle life--there shortening, apparently by but a few months,
the span of some worn-out creature, already on the verge of the grave.
The visitation had its wildly picturesque accompaniments. Pitch and tar
were kept burning during the night in the openings of the infected
lanes; and the unsteady light flickered with ghastly effect on house and
wall, and tall chimney-top, and on the flitting figures of the watchers.
By day, the frequent coffins, borne to the grave by but a few bearers,
and the frequent smoke that rose outside the place from fires kindled to
consume the clothes of the infected, had their sad and startling effect;
a migration, too, of a considerable portion of the fisher population to
the caves of the hill, in which they continued to reside till the
disease left the town, formed a striking accompaniment of the
visitation; and yet, curiously enough, as the danger seemed to increase
the consternation lessened, and there was much less fear among the
people when the disease was actually ravaging the place, than when it
was merely stalking within sight around it. We soon became familiar,
too, with its direst horrors, and even learned to regard them as
comparatively ordinary and commonplace. I had read, about two years
before, the passage in Southey's "_Colloquies_," in which Sir Thomas
More is made to remark that modern Englishmen have no guarantee
whatever, in these latter times, that their shores shall not be v