to Camberwell and its environs. The child, being exhausted with fatigue, as also in want of nutriment, exposed to the cold and a heavy rain, became unable to walk; he, therefore, took him up, and threw him over his back, suspending him by the heels. In this situation they were discovered, in the high road, by the watchman, about four o'clock on Tuesday morning. The man being remonstrated with, he changed the position of the child, took him in his arms, and went away. About six the same morning, he was seen near the Red Cap, on Camberwell Green, by Mr. Spencer, a bricklayer of the village, with the child again suspended at his back, apparently dead. This unusual sight induced him to call some of his neighbours to his aid; and the man being taken into custody with the apparently lifeless child to the public house, where (very much to the credit of Mr. Okines, who keeps it) the body was received with the utmost humanity and tender concern. It being deemed expedient to send for the parochial beadle, Mr. Rickwood attended; and, on examining the body, which was laid upon one of the tap-room tables, to all appearance dead, he gave charge of the man to Mr. Okines and the persons present, coming himself for me to inspect the corpse, and give my opinion thereon. It was half past seven when I got there, and examined the apparently

dead child.

"State of the body.-His extremities cold; his eyes fixed; the arterial circulation suspended; vitality apparently extinct.-Under such depressed circumstances, there could hardly be a hope entertained of re-animation; however, I determined to attempt it according to the methods and by the means prescribed in the formula of our most excellent institution. The resuscitative process was most assiduously employed for full thirty minutes before the least signs of life could be discovered; at length a feeble and irregular pulsation was produced; which continuing gradually to get stronger, I insinuated a small quantity of volatile spirits into the stomach, which brought on repeated spasms of a very short duration. From that time the powers of life increasing, an irregular convulsive motion of the extremities came on; soon after which he rapidly recovered, and was taken in hot flannels to the workhouse, where he received some proper nourishment and humane attention; he then slept nearly an hour and a half, when, waking greatly relieved, he again took refreshment, and was soon afterwards conveyed to his friends, who had been in the most painful state of mind respecting both him and his uncle. The parental feelings on this occasion may be conceived, but not easily described."

FEMALE INTREPIDITY.

Haverhill in America was settled 1637, and incorporated in 1645. During the first seventy-five years from its settlement it suffered often, and greatly, by savage depredations. In the year 1667, on the 5th day of March, a body of Indians attacked this town, burnt a small number of houses, and killed and captured about forty of the inhabitants. A party of them, arrayed in all the terrors of the Indian war-dress, and carrying with them the multiplied horrors of a savage invasion, approached near to the house of a Mr. Dustan. This man was abroad at his usual labour. Upon the first alarm, he flew to the house, with the hope of conveying to a place of safety his family, consisting of his wife, who had been confined a week only in child-bed; her nurse, a Mrs. Taff, a widow from the neighbourhood, and eight children. Seven of his children he ordered to flee with the utmost expedition, in the course oppo

site to that in which the danger was approaching; and went himself to assist his wife. Before she could leave her bed, the savages were upon them. Her husband, despairing of rendering her any service, flew to the door, mounted his horse, and determined to snatch up the child, with which he was unable to part, when he should overtake the little flock. When he came up to them, about two hundred yards from the house, he was unable to make a choice, or to leave any one of the number. He therefore determined to take his lot with them, and to defend them from their murderers, or die by their side. A body of Indians pursued, and came up with him, and from near distances fired at him and his little company. He returned the fire, and retreated, alternately. For more than a mile he kept so resolute a face to his enemy, retiring in the rear of his charge; returned the fire of the savages so often, and with such good success; and sheltered so effectually his terrified companions, that he finally lodged them, safe from the pursuing butchers, in a distant house. When it is remembered how numerous his assailants were, how bold when an overmatch for their enemies, how active, and what excellent marksmen, a devout mind will consider the hand of Providence as unusually visible in the preservation of this family.

Another party of Indians entered the house immediately after Mr. Dustan quitted it, and found Mrs. Dustan and her nurse, who was attempting to fly with the infant in her arms. Mrs. Dustan they ordered to rise instantly; and, before she could completely dress herself, obliged her and her companion to quit the house, after they had plundered it and set it on fire. In company with several other captives, they began their march into the wilderness; she, feeble, sick, terrified beyond measure, partially clad, one of her feet bare, and the season utterly unfit for comfortable travelling. The air was chilly and keen, and the earth covered alternately with snow and deep mud. Her conductors were unfeeling, insolent, and revengeful. Murder was their glory, and torture their sport. Her infant was in her nurse's arms; and infants are the customary victims of savage barbarity.

The company had proceeded but a short distance, when an Indian, thinking it an incumbrance, took the child out of the nurse's arms, and dashed its head against a tree. What were then the feelings of the mother!

Such of the other captives as began to be weary, and to lag, the Indians tomahawked. The slaughter was not an act of revenge, nor of cruelty. It was a mere convenience, an effort so familiar, as not even to excite emotion.

Feeble as Mrs. Dustan was, both she and her nurse sustained, without yielding, the fatigue of the journey. Their intense distress for the death of the child, and of their companions; anxiety for those whom they had left behind, and increasing terror for themselves, raised these unhappy women to such a degree of vigour, that, notwithstanding their fatigue, their exposure to cold, their sufferance of hunger, and their sleeping on the damp ground under an inclement sky, they finished an expedition of about one hundred and fifty miles, without losing their spirits, or injuring their health.

The wigwam to which they were conducted, and which belonged to the savage who had claimed them as his property, was inhabited by twelve persons. In the month of April, this family set out with their captives for a settlement still more remote; and informed them, that, when they arrived at the settlement, they must be stripped, scourged, and run the gauntlet, naked, between two files of Indians, containing the whole number found in the settlement, for such they declared was the standing custom of their nation. This information, you will believe, made a deep impression on the minds of the captive

women; and led them irresistibly to devise all possible means of escape. On the 30th of the same month, very early in the morning, Mrs. Dustan, while the Indians were asleep, having awakened her nurse, and a fellowprisoner, (a youth taken some time before from Worcester,) despatched, with the assistance of her companions, ten of the twelve Indians; the other two escaped. With the scalps of these savages, they returned through the wilderness; and, having arrived safely at Haverhill, and afterwards at Boston, received a handsome reward for their intrepid conduct from the legislature.

THE DREADFUL PLAGUE OF LONDON.

It is not our intention to give a detailed account of all the circumstances connected with this awful national calamity, as there are few readers to whom the various Histories of England have not made it familiar; but having in the course of our research met with some interesting works, written at that period, rather as the result of the personal observation of the writers, than a general history, and these works containing many minute particulars of singular interest, we imagine we shall gratify our readers by occasionally presenting them with some of those scenes of terror under appropriate heads, and which must acquire additional importance from being delineated by actual spectators.

GENERAL STATE OF LONDON AND THE SUBURBS.

about "London might well be said to be in tears; the mourners did not go the streets indeed, for nobody put on black, or made a formal dress of mourning for their nearest friends; but the voice of mourning was truly heard in the streets; the shrieks of the women and children at the windows and doors of their houses, where their dearest relations were, perhaps dying, or just dead, were so frequent to be heard, as we passed the streets, that it was enough to pierce the stoutest heart in the world to hear them. Tears and lamentations were seen almost in every house, especially in the first part of the visitation; for towards the latter end, men's hearts were hardened, and death was so constantly before their eyes, that they did not much concern themselves for the loss of their friends, expecting, that themselves should be summoned the next hour. "Such mournings and lamentations were frequently heard in the streets, as pierced the stoutest heart to hear them, and the houses were filled with tears and lamentations. Nothing was heard in the day, but the dismal cry Pray, for us, and in the night the horrid call, Bring out your dead,' and scarcely any thing vendible except coffins. Sometimes persons dropped down dead in the streets; many did without any warning, not knowing they had the plague; and others had only time to go the next porch or door, sit down, and die, unnoticed and disregarded by the passengers.

"In the month of July, the plague increased exceedingly; the bill rose in the first week to 725; the second to 1089; the third to 1843; and the fourth to 2010. About the middle of the month, the plague, which chiefly prevailed in St. Giles's and the out-parishes, extended itself to Southwark and Lambeth, and when it began to abate in the western parishes, it raged with violence at Clerkenwell, Cripplegate, Shoreditch, Bishopsgate, Aldersgate, Whitechapel, and Stepney. On the 29th of the month, the king removed from Hampton Court to Salisbury, which he soon quitted on account of the infection, and took up his residence at Oxford."

FOREWARNINGS AND SUPERSTITIONS.

"In the first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for several months before the plague, as there did the year after another, a liitle before the fire; the old women and the phlegmatic hypochondriac part of the other sex, whom I could almost call old women too, remarked, (especially afterwards, though not till both these judgments were over,) that these two comets passed directly over the city, and that so very near the houses, that it was plain they imported something peculiar to the city alone; and the comet before the pestilence, was of a faint, dull, languid colour, and its motion very heavy, solemn, and slow but that the comet before the fire, was bright and sparkling, or, as others said, flaming, and its motion swift and furious; and that accordingly, one foretold a heavy judgment, slow but severe, terrible and frightful, as was the plague; but the other foretold a stroke, sudden, swift, and fiery as the conflagration; nay, so particular some people were, that as they looked upon the comet preceding the fire, they fancied that they not only saw it pass swiftly and fiercely, and could perceive the motion with their eye, but even they heard it; that it made a rushing mighty noise, fierce and terrible, though at a distance, and but just perceivable.

“Books frighted them terribly; such as Lilly's Almanac, Gadbury's Alogical Predictions; poor Robin's Almanac, and the like; also several pretended religious books; one entitled, Come out of her my people, lest you be partaker of her plagues; another called, Fair Warning; another, Britain's Remembrancer, and many such; all, or most part of which, foretold directly or covertly the ruin of the city: nay, some were so enthusiastically bold, as to run about the streets, with their oral predictions, pretending that they were sent to preach to the city; and one in particular, who like Jonah to Nineveh, cried in the streets, Yet forty days, and London shall be destroyed.' I will not be positive, whether he said yet forty days, or yet a few days. Another ran about naked, except a pair of drawers about his waist; crying day and night, like a man that Josephus mentions, who cried, Woe to Jerusalem!" a little before the destruction of that city: so this poor naked creature cried, Oh! the great and dreadful God!' and said no more, but repeated those words continually, with a voice and countenance full of horror, a swift pace, and nobody could ever find him to stop, or rest, or take any sustenance, at least, that ever I could hear of. I met this poor creature several times in the streets, and would have spoken to him, but he would not enter into speech with me, or any one else; but held on his dismal cries continually.

"Some heard voices warning them to be gone, for that there would be such a plague in London, so that the living should not be able to bury the dead: others saw apparitions in the air. Here they told us, they saw a flaming sword held in a hand coming out of a cloud, with a point hanging directly over the city. There they saw hearses and coffins in the air, carrying to be buried. And there again, heaps of dead bodies lying unburied, and the like.

"One time I saw a crowd of people all staring up in the air, to see what a woman told them appeared plain to her, which was an angel clothed in white, with a fiery sword in his hand, waving it, or brandishing it over his head. She described every part of the figure to the life; shewed them the motion, and the form; and the poor people came into it so eagerly, and with so much readiness; Yes, I see it all plainly,' says one. There's the sword as plain as can be.' Another saw the angel. One saw his very face, and cried out, What a glorious

creature he was! One saw one thing, and one another. I looked as earnestly as the rest, but, perhaps, not with so much willingness to be imposed upon; and I said indeed, that I could see nothing but a white cloud, bright on one side, by the shining of the sun upon the other part. The woman endeavoured to shew it to me, but could not make me confess that I saw it, which, indeed, if I had, I must have lied: but the woman, turning upon me, looked in my face, and fancied I laughed; in which her imagination deceived her too; for I really did not laugh, but was very seriously reflecting how the poor people were terrified by the force of their own imagination. However, she turned from me, calling me a profane fellow, and a scoffer; told me, that it was a time of God's anger, and dreadful judgments were approaching; and that despisers such as I, should wander and perish.

of

"In a narrow passage by Bishopsgate church-yard, stood a man looking through between the palisadoes into the burying place; and as many people as the narrowness of the passage would admit to stop, without hindering the passage others; and he was talking mighty eagerly to them, and pointing now to one place, then to another, and affirming, that he saw a ghost walking upon such a grave-stone there; he described the shape, the posture, and the movement of it so exactly, that it was the greatest matter of amazement to him in the world, that every body did not see it as well as he. On a sudden he would cry, There it is now it comes this way :' then, 'tis turned back ;' till at length he persuaded the people into so firm a belief of it, that one fancied he saw it, and another fancied he saw it; and thus he came every day making a strange hubbub, considering it was in so narrow o passage, till Bishopsgate clock struck eleven; and then the ghost would seem to start; and as if he were called away, disappeared on a sudden."

HORROR OF A MOTHER AT HER CHILD'S INFECTION.

"I remember, and while I am writing this story, I think I hear the very sound of it, a certain lady had an only daughter, a young maiden about nineteen years old, and who was possessed of a very considerable fortune; they were only lodgers in the house where they were: the young woman, her mother, and the maid had been abroad on some occasion, I do not remember what, and the house was shut up; but about two hours after they came home, the young lady complained she was not well; in a quarter of an hour more she vomited, and had a violent pain in her head. Pray God, says her mother, in a terrible fright, my child has not the distemper! The pain in her head increasing, her mother ordered the bed to be warmed, and resolved to put her to bed; and prepared to give her things to sweat, which was the ordinary remedy to be taken, when the first apprehensions of the distemper began.

"While the bed was airing, the mother undressed the young woman, and just as she was laid down in the bed, she looking upon her body with a candle, immediately discovered the fatal tokens on the inside of her thighs. Her mother not being able to contain herself, threw down the candle, and shrieked out in such a frightful manner, that it was enough to strike horror in the stoutest heart in the world; nor was it one scream, or one cry, but the fright having seized her spirits, she fainted first, then recovered, then ran all over the house, up and down the stairs, like one distracted, and indeed really was distracted, and continued shrieking, and crying out for several hours void of all sense, or at least government of her senses, and, as I was told, never came thoroughly to herself again: as to the young maiden, she was a dead corpse