returned and formed with alacrity in the rear. In the late war in India, Sir Eyre Coote, after the battle of Porto Nuovo, being aware of the ftrong attachment of the Highlanders to their ancient mufic, expreffed his applause of their behaviour on that day, by giving them fifty pounds to buy a pair of bag-pipes.

So quick and powerful is the influence of moral caufes in the formation of the characters of nations and men, that the Highlanders have actually undergone greater alteration in the courfe of the prefent century, than for a thousand years before. Freedom and equal laws, by encouraging industry, fecuring property, and fubftituting independent fentiments and views in the room of an obfequious devo tion to feudal chiefs, have redeemed the character of the Highlanders from thofe imputations which were common to them with all nations in a fimilar political fituation; while what is excellent in their character, the fenfibility of their nature, the hardiness of their conftitutions, their warlike difpofition, and their generous hofpitality to ftrangers, remain undiminifhed. And though emancipated now from the feudal yoke, they ftill fhew a voluntary reverence to their chiefs, as well as affection to thofe of their own tribe and kindred qualities which are not only very amiable and engaging in themfelves, but which are connected with that character of alacrity and inviolable fidelity and refolution which their exertions in the field have juftly obtained in the world.

A Hiftory of the Comets, Earthquakes, and the Plague, which astonished or afflicted the age of JUSTINIAN.

(From Gibbon's Hiftory, vol. 4.] IN the fifth year of the reign, and in the month of September, a comet was feen during twenty days in the weftern quarter of the heavens, and which fhot its rays into the north. Eight years afterwards, while the fun was in Capri. corn, another comet appeared to follow In the Sagitary: the fize was gradually increafing; the head was in the caft, the tail in the weft, and it remained vifible • The firft comet is mentioned by John Malala, tom. ii. p. 190. 219. and Theophanes, p. 154; the fecond by Procopius, Perfic, 1. ii. c. 4. Yet I ftrongly fufpect their identity. The palenefs of the fun, Vandal. 1. ii. c. 14. is applied by Theophanes, p. 158. to a different year.

above forty days. The nations, who gazed with astonishment, expected wars and calamities from their baleful influ ence; and thefe expectations were abundantly fulfilled. The aftronomers diffembled their ignorance of the nature of thefe blazing ftars, which they affected to reprefent as the floating meteors of the air; and few among them embraced the fimple notion of Seneca and the Chaldeans, that they are only planets of a longer period and more eccentric mo. tion. Time and fcience have juftified the conjectures and predictions of the Roman fage: the telescope has opened new worlds to the eyes of aftronomers t; and, in the narrow space of history and fable, one and the fame comet is already found to have revifited the earth in feven equal revolutions of five hundred and feventy five years. The first‡, which af cends beyond the Chriftian æra one thoufand feven hundred and fixty-feven years, is coëval with Ogyges, the father of Gre cian antiquity. And this appearance explains the tradition which Varro has preferved, that, under his reign, the planet Venus changed her colour, fize, figure, and courfe; a prodigy, without example either in paft or fucceeding ages . The fecond vifit, in the year eleven hundred and ninety-three, is darkly implied in the fable of Electra, the feventh of the Pleiads, who have been reduced to fix fince the time of the Trojan war. That nymph, the wife of Dardanus, was un

* Seneca's feventh book of natural quef ftions difplays in the theory of comets, a philofophic mind. Yet fhould we not too candidly confound a vague prediction, a veniet tempus, &c. with the merit of real discoveries.

Aftronomers may ftudy Newton and Halley. I draw my humble fcience from the article Comete, in the French Encyclopedie by M. d'Alembert.

Whifton the honeft, pious, vifionary Whiston, had fancied, for the æra of Noah's flood, (2242 years before Chrift) a prior apparition of the fame comet which drowned the earth with its tail.

A Differtation of Freret (Memoires de l'Academie des infcriptions, tom. x. page 357-377) affords an happy union of philofophy and erudition. The phænomenon, in the time of Ogyges, was preferved by Varro, (apud Auguftin. de Civitate Dei, xxi. 8.) who quotes Caftor, Dion of Naples, and Adraftus of Cyzicus—nobiles mathematici. The two fub fequent periods are preferved by the Greek mythologifts, and the fpurious books of Sibylline verfes.

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able

clude a nation within the limits of a wall, almost realizes the wish of Caligula, that the Roman people had but one neck. Two hundred and fifty thousand perfons are faid to have perished in the earth. quake of Antioch, whofe domeftic multitudes were fwelled by the conflux of ftrangers to the feftival of the Afcenfion. The lofs of Berytus was of smaller account, but of much greater value. That city, on the coast of Phoenicia, was illuftrated by the ftudy of the civil law, which opened the fureft road to wealth and dignity: the schools of Berytus were filled with the rifing fpirits of the age, and many a youth was loft in the earthquake, who might have lived to be the fcourge or the guardian of his country. In these difafters the architect becomes the enemy of mankind. The hut of a favage, or the tent of an Arab, may be thrown down without injury to the inhabitant; and the Peruvians had reason to deride the folly of their Spanish conquerors, who with so much cost and labour erected their own fepulchres. The rich marbles of a patrician are dashed on his own head a whole people is buried under the ruins of public and private edifices, and the conflagration is kindled and propagated by the innumerable fires which are neceffary for the subsistence and manufactures of a great city. Inftead of the mutual fympathy which might comfort and affift the diftreffed, they dreadfully experience the vices and paffions which are released from the fear of punishment: the tottering houfes are pillaged by intrepid avarice; revenge embraces the moment, and selects the victim; and the earth often swallows the affaffin or the ravisher in the confummation of their crimes. Superftition involves the prefent danger with invifible terrors; and if the image of death may sometimes be fubfervient to the virtue or repentance of individuals, an affrighted people is more forcibly moved to expect the end of the world, or to deprecate with fervile homage the wrath of an avenging Deity.

Ethiopia and Egypt have been ftigma tifed in every age, as the original fource and feminary of the plague. In a damp, hot, ftagnating air, this African fever is generated from the putrefaction of animal fubftances, and especially from the fwarms of locufts, not lefs deftructive to mankind in their death than in their lives. The fatal disease which depopulated the earth in the time of Juftinian and his fucceffors, first appeared in the neigh

bourhood of Pelufium, between the Serbonian bog and the eastern channel of the Nile. From thence, tracing as it were a double path, it spread to the Eaft, over Syria, Perfia, and the Indies, and penetrated to the Weft, along the coaft of A-. frica, and over the continent of Europe. In the fpring of the fecond year Conftantinople, during three or four months, was vifited by the peftilence; and Procopius, who observed its progress and symp toms with the eyes of a physician, has emulated the skill and diligence of Thucy dides in the defcription of the plague of Athens. The infection was sometimes announced by the vifions of a diftempered fancy, and the victim despaired as foon as he had heard the menace and felt the ftroke of an invifible spectre. But the greater number, in their beds, in the streets, in their ufual occupation, were surprised by a slight fever; so slight indeed, that neither the pulfe, nor the colour of the patient gave any figns of the approaching danger. The fame, the next, or the fucceeding day, it was de clared by the fwelling of the glands, particularly thofe of the groin, of the armpits, and under the ear; and when these bubos or tumours were opened, they were found to contain a coal, or black fubftance, of the size of a lentil. If they came to a juft fwelling and fuppuration, the patient was faved by this kind and natural discharge of the morbid humour. But if they continued hard and dry, a mortification quickly enfued, and the fifth day was commonly the term of his life. The fever was often accompanied with lethargy or delirium; the bodies of the fick were covered with black puftules or carbuncles, the fymptoms of immediate death; and in the conftitutions too feeble to produce an eruption, the vomiting of blood was followed by a mortification of the bowels. To pregnant women the plague was generally mortal: yet one infant was drawn alive from his dead mother, and three mothers furvived the lofs of their infected foetus. Youth was the moft perilous feafon; and the female fex was lefs fufceptible than the male: but every rank and profeffion was attacked with indifcriminate rage; and many of thofe who efcaped were deprived of the use of their speech, without being fecure from a return of the diforder. The phyficians

* Thucydides, c. 51. affirms, that the infection could only be once taken; but Eva

grius,

phyficians of Conftantinople were zealous and fkilful: but their art was baffled by the various fymptoms and pertinacious vehemence of the difeafe: the fame remedies were productive of contrary effects, and the event capriciously difapointed their prognoftics of death or recovery. The order of funerals, and the right of fepulchres, were confounded; those who were left without friends or fervants, lay unburied in the streets, or in their defolate houses; and a magiftrate was authorised to collect the promifcuous heaps of dead bodies, to tranfport them by land or water, and to inter them in deep pits beyond the precincts of the city. Their own danger, and the profpect of public diftrefs, awakened fome remorfe in the minds of the moft vicious of nankind: the confidence of health again revived their paffions and habits; but philofophy muft difdain the obfervation of Procopius, that the lives of fuch men were guarded by the peculiar favour of fortune or providence. He forgot, or perhaps he fecretly recollected, that the plague had touched the perfon of Juftinian himself: but the abftemious diet of the Emperor may fuggeft, as in the cafe of Socrates, a more rational and honourable caufe for his recovery *. During his fickness, the public confternation was exprefled in the habits of the citizens; and their idleness and defpondence occafioned a general scarcity in the capital of the Eaft.

Contagion is the infeparable fymptom of the plague; which by mutual refpiration, is tranfufed from the infected per fons to the lungs and ftomach of thofe who approach them. While philofophers believe and tremble, it is fingular, that the existence of a real danger fhould have been denied by a people moft prone to vain and imaginary terrors t. Yet the

grius, who had family experience of the plague, obferves, that fome persons who had efcaped the firft, funk under the fecond attack; and this repetition is confirmed by Fabius Paullinus, p. 588. I obferve, that on this head phyficians are diviced; and the nature and operation of the disease may not always be fimilar.

It was thus that Socrates had been faved by his temperance in the plague of Athens, Aul. Gellius, Noct. Attic. ii. 1. Dr Mead accounts for the peculiar falubrity of religious houfes, by the two advantages of feclufion and abftinence.

Mead proves that the plague is conta, gious, from Thucydides, Lucretius, Aristotle,

fellow-citizens of Procopius were fatisfied, by fome fhort and partial experience, that the infection could not be gained by the clofeft conversation; and this perfuafion might fupport the affidu. ity of friends or physicians in the care of the fick, whom inhuman prudence would have condemned to folitude and defpair. But the fatal fecurity, like the predefti. nation of the Turks, muft have aided the progrefs of the contagion; and those falutary precautions to which Europe is indebted for her fafety, were unknown to the government of Juftinian. No reftraints were imposed on the free and frequent intercourfe of the Roman provinces: from Perfia to France, the nations were mingled and infected by wars and emigrations; and the peftilential odour which lurks for years in a bale of cotton, was imported, by the abuse of trade, into the moft diftant regions. The mode of its propagation is explained by the remark of Procopius himself, that it always spread from the fea-coaft to the inland country: the moft fequeftered islands and mountains were fucceffively vifited; the places which had escaped the fury of its firft paffage, were alone exposed to the contagion of the enfuing year. The winds might diffufe that fubtle venom; but unless the atinofphere be previously difpofed for its reception, the plague would foon expire in the cold or tempe. rate climates of the earth. Such was the univerfal corruption of the air, that the peftilence which burft forth in the fif teenth year of Juftinian was not checked or alleviated by any difference of the feafons. In time, its first malignity was a bated and difperfed; the disease alternately languished and revived; but it was not till the end of a calamitous period of fiftytwo years that mankind recovered their health, or the air refumed its pure and falubrious quality. No facts have been preferved to fuftain an account, or even a conjecture, of the numbers that perished in this extraordinary mortality. Ionly find, that, during three months, five,

Galen, and common experience: and he refutes, the contrary opinion of the French phyficians who visited Marseilles in the year 1720. Yet thefe were the recent and enlightened fpectators of a plague which, in a few months, fwept away 50,000 inhabitants (fur la Pefte de Marfeille, Paris, 1786) of a city that, in the present hour of profperity and trade, contains no more that 90,000 fouls (Necker, für les Finances, tom.i, p.231.)

and