her uncivilized people, rendered this malady common;
but at the time in which Prince Bladud lived, no cure for it was known
to the Britons. Being highly infectious, therefore, all persons
afflicted with it were not only held in disgust and abhorrence, but, by
the barbarous laws of the times, were doomed to be driven from the
abodes of their fellow-creatures, and to take their chance of life or
death in the forests and the deserts, exposed alike to hunger and to
beasts of prey.

So great was the horror of this disease among the heathen Britons, and
so strictly was the law for preventing its extension observed, that
even the rank of the young prince caused no exception to be made in his
favor. Neither was his tender youth suffered to plead for sympathy;
and the king himself was unable to protect his own son from the cruel
treatment accorded to the lepers of those days. No sooner was the
report whispered abroad, that Prince Bladud was afflicted with leprosy,
than the chiefs and elders of the council assembled together, and
insisted that Lud Hurdebras should expel his son from the royal city,
and drive him forth into the wilderness, in order to prevent the
dreaded infection from spreading.

The fond mother of the unfortunate Bladud vainly endeavored to prevail
on her royal husband to resist this barbarous injunction. All that
maternal love and female tenderness could urge, she pleaded in behalf
of her only child, whose bodily sufferings rendered him but the dearer
object of affection to her fond bosom.

The distressed father, however deeply and painfully he felt the queen's
passionate appeal, could not act in contradiction to the general voice
of his subjects; he was compelled to stifle all emotions of natural
compassion for his innocent son, and to doom him to perpetual
banishment.

Bladud awaited his father's decision, in tears and silence, without
offering a single word of supplication, lest he should increase the
anguish of his parent's hearts. But, when the cruel sentence of
banishment was confirmed by the voice of his hitherto doating sire, he
uttered a cry of bitter sorrow, and covering his disfigured visage with
both hands, turned about to leave the haunts of his childhood forever,
exclaiming, "Who will have compassion upon me, now that I am abandoned
by my parents?"

How sweet, how consoling, would have been the answer of a Christian
parent to this agonizing question; but on Bladud's mother the heavenly