drafts from regiments of the line, those persons being selected to do duty with them whom wounds or natural infirmities had rendered incapable of active service. As soon as by such means the numbers of two or three of them became abundant, the limited-service men were all drafted out of them, and thus they became available, as far as a body of invalids could well be, for any service, in any part of the world, to which the government might send them. The third battalion was one of those which had been thus dealt with. In point of numbers, too, it was, when I joined it, exceedingly strong. I believe that our muster-roll told a tale of twelve hundred rank and file, at the least. But such a collection of halt and lame, and blind, and sick, and lazy! I verily believe that a single good light company would have thrashed us all. Nevertheless, we were considered quite efficient enough for garrison duty either at home or abroad; and abroad, it soon came out, that we were destined to go. Í had not occupied my barrack-room on Spike Island a month, when we received orders to prepare for foreign service, and two or three troop-ships coming in soon afterwards, we were with all practicable haste put on board and sent to sea. I had been rejoined by my wife at the Isle of Wight, whither, on my return from Portugal, I was sent, and had brought her thence, not anticipating another separation, to Ireland. We both pleaded hard for leave to make the voyage together; but this was contrary to the rules of the service, and could not be acceded to. Once more, therefore, we bade each other farewell, and once again she went back sorrowful and faint-hearted to her relatives in the neighbourhood of Birmingham. Meanwhile the regiment pursued its voyage, and early in the spring of 1813 reached Malta. It may perhaps be supposed that of service in that most quiet of quiet stations I can have absolutely nothing to tell; and had Malta been circumstanced as it usually is, the supposition would have been well founded. But the case was quite otherwise. When we reached the place the plague was raging with excessive violence, and the state of excitement in which we were kept by it was extreme. I am quite ignorant whether or not any account of that terrible visitation has ever appeared; but to what I myself both saw and heard I may in either case bear my testimony, warning you that mine must necessarily be but a meagre narrative, inasmuch as the utmost care was taken to hinder the corps in garrison from holding any communication, verbal or otherwise, with the inhabitants. I have reason to believe that the plague was imported into Malta so early as the year 1810 or 1811, and that it was brought thither by a ship from the coast of Barbary, of which the lading was cotton. I believe, too, that the infected goods were smuggled on shore; for the ship was put into quarantine as usual - and yet the disease broke out. Be this, however, as it may, weeks and even months elapsed before the authorities became aware of its prevalence in the island; so fearful were the Maltese of the consequences which were sure to follow, and of the total stop which the discovery would put to their trade and their amusements. But by degrees things came to such a pitch, that an universal alarm was created. People died by dozens and scores daily; and the knell rang so often, and funeral processions became so frequent, that the attention of the government was called to it, and an inquiry was instituted. The result of that inquiry was to confirm beyond dispute the terrible suspicions which were afloat. It was found that the disease, which cut off so many of all ages and sexes, was no ordinary malady. It did not show itself in all cases in the same way, neither were its issues invariably fatal; but there was a character about it which was not to be mistaken. Persons might be, or seem to be, in perfect health up to a given moment; they eat, and drank, and went about their business as usual, till all at once a slight swelling, accompanied by redness, made its appearance in some part of their bodies, and health and strength, and not unfrequently life itself, disappeared with extraordinary rapidity. The boils in question affected often the forehead, but more frequently still, the armpits. They showed themselves, however, on other parts of the body likewise, and their progress to maturity was marvellously quick. If the patient was vigorous enough to hold out till they burst, then were his chances of recovery considerable; if they did not burst, he invariably died. But this was not the only mode in which disease did its work. People might be seen walking the street apparently in the highest health and spirits, till suddenly they were seized with giddiness, which did not throw them down, but spun them round and round, like sheep when afflicted by the complaint which is called the stag.. gers. There was no instance of a patient surviving where the plague took this form. He fell from one fit into another, and dying in a few hours, becoming immediately afterwards black and livid, like one who has been poisoned. No sooner was the presence of the pest made known than the governor adopted every possible precaution, in order to hinder the contagion from being carried into the barracks, where as yet no symptoms of the malady had shown themselves. The gates of all were shut, and guards mounted, with orders to shoot those who should attempt to pass, either from the military stations into the town, or from the town into the military stations. Outposts likewise were established, and a cordon drawn round the forts, any attempt to break which was to be dealt with in like manner; while the troops were ordered to send out the reliefs with bayonets fixed, and to clear the way for themselves in passing along the streets, as if they had been dealing with an enemy. In like manner each guard and piquet, after it had been relieved at its post, was marched into one of the casemated apartments, where the men were required to strip to the skin, and to bathe in huge jars of oil. At the same time their garments, and belts, and accoutrements were suspended over a fire of charcoal, and thoroughly smoked; a process which was said to have contributed much to keep infection at a distance, but which was certainly not of a nature to gratify the colonels of regiments, who might have looked for a handsome reserve out of the government allowance for clothing. Whether it was owing to these precautions, or that the style of living in barracks had something to do with it, or that Providence took more care of us than we either expected or deserved, I cannot tell; but it is as certain as it is remarkable, that not one British soldier died of the plague. Two years it was in the island, committing fearful ravages everywhere, and sparing in its wrath neither the old nor the young; but it came not near the quarters of the garrison, except in one instance, and that was a very remarkable one. Under the cavalier of St. Jaques, in the counter-force of the Port, there is a casemate, or bomb-proof lodging, in and near to which dwelt two families, between whom all direct communication was, on account of the plague, cut off, though, in other and brighter days, they had been the best friends possible. One of these consisted of a Maltese functionary, the captain, as he was called, of the magazine, whose duty it was to take care of the stores in that quarter, and of whom all men spoke and thought favourably. He was an old man, whom his very style of dress had rendered remarkable, for he wore a scarlet coat, in shape resembling that which I now wear, scarlet breeches, and crimson stockings, with a cocked-hat trimmed with gold lace, and hooked with bands that were made of gold He, with his two daughters, inhabited apartments in the casemate, and very quietly, albeit very contentedly, they passed their days there. The other family of whom I have spoken was that of Sergeant Crighton, of the British artillery, and which consisted of the sergeant himself, his wife, and two children, who dwelt in a small detached house hard by. Both parties had gardens, which a wall only divided; both parties, too, had goats, or rather the goats were their common property; and so just were they in their dealings one with the other, that, rather than divide the produce on each occasion of milking, they took it by turns to milk, and alternately kept the whole. Thus, if the Maltese milked the goats in the morning, the goats were driven to Sergeant Crighton's for milking in the evening; if the evening's gift went to the captain of the magazine, the British soldier put in his claim to whatever the morning might produce. So long as the bills of health were every where clean, there neither occurred, nor could occur, any interruption to this device; indeed, the goats soon came to understand as well as their owners what was expected of them, and of their own accord went from house to house at the appointed seasons. It came to pass, however, some time after the plague had broken out, that Mrs. Crighton observed, from the appearance of the goats' udders when they arrived, that they had never been milked that morning. She was surprised; but either because no thought of evil entered into her mind, or that she looked upon the circumstance as the result of accident, she took no notice of it. The animals were milked, they were turned loose again, and betook themselves, as usual, to the place of pasturage. When, however, the same appearances presented themselves again and again, Mrs. Crighton became alarmed, and, without communicating her intention to her husband, she determined to ascertain whether all were well with her neighbours. For this purpose she clambered over the wall, and made her way to the apartments of the casemate; but, though she knocked several times, nobody paid attention to the signal. She then pushed open the door and entered. In one room lay the father in bed, and his two daughters stretched at length along the floor beside him. The Maltese family were dead, and the appearance of the bodies left no room to doubt that they had died of the prevailing malady. Mrs. Crighton returned to her own home a sadder, if not a wiser woman, but she returned not unscathed. Either she had contracted the seeds of the pest during the brief space which she stood in the dead chamber, or the udders of the goats which she milked conveyed to her the infection, for she had caught the plague. She communicated it, moreover, to her children, and within the customary period all became its victims; for it was one of the horrible parts of this 'horrible tragedy, that people and houses which were suspected of infection became things to be shunned by all around them, and that the very consciousness of this, as well as of other consequences which were sure to follow, caused the unhappy creatures themselves to conceal their misery. Hence both of these families, as well as many more which became utterly extinguished in Malta, died in secret; no one being aware that there was illness among them, till its results became palpable to the whole world. As a matter of course, one of the first measures adopted by government, as soon as the state of the city became known, was to erect everywhere, in the ditches, and resting against the scarps of the glacis, numerous temporary hospitals. These were composed of a few boards only, which being hastily fastened together, were run up beside the breast-work of the fortifications, and covered over, so as to be impervious to the weather, with light deals and tarpaulins. The orders issued were, that every person who was taken with the plague, no matter of what age, sex, rank, or condition, should be immediately conveyed to one of these pest-houses, and that all the wearing apparel and cotton and linen furniture belonging to the invalid, or to the house of which he might have been an inmate, should be immediately burned. These were terrible, though perhaps necessary, orders, with which no human being complied who could avoid it; for cupidity is in the human breast a stronger passion than the love of life itself; and men preferred running the almost inevitable risk of infection, rather than that their property should be destroyed. In like manner there were particular persons appointed to remain and bury the dead, a body of wild Burgomotes from Smyrna, whom the temptation of large pay lured over to face the enemy, and to die or not, as chance, or rather Providence, might determine. There was something fearfully picturesque in the dress and bearing of these charnelites. They wore coarse canvass smockfrocks, with gloves which reached above the elbow, boots of untanned leather, and caps which, buttoning down over the ears, left only a small portion of their swarthy visages exposed. Their implement of office, again, was a long hook, in form and size not unlike to a boat-hook, with which they seized the dead body, and dragged it from the place where it lay, and threw it in the cart; for in Malta, as in London long ago, the dead-cart traversed the streets both day and night, that corpses might be piled upon it, that unceremoniously torn from hands which would have naturally prepared them for the grave, they might be cast unshrived, unblest, unmourned, into holes which the strange scavengers dug. - The plague in Malta was, as I believe it generally is, very capricious in its operations. Multitudes caught it no one could tell how, and perished; whereas others who came in perpetual contact with the dying and the dead escaped. Sergeant Crighton, of whom mention has already been made, offered a striking example of this fact. His wife and children died beside him; he watched them in their decline; and, when life became extinct, he did for them the last offices which he was permitted to do. He sewed the corpses in linen bags, took them one after another on his shoulder, carried them to the top of the garden-wall by means of a ladder, and dropped them one after another into the dead-cart,-yet he never caught the infection. The Burgomotes, on the other hand, though they carefully abstained from handling the dead bodies, though they never touched them except with their hooks, and underwent frequent ablutions in jars of oil and vinegar,—all, to a man, contracted the loathsome disease, and all died under its ravages. Ay, and more remarkable still, a thorough-paced ruffian of an Irish seaman, who, being under sentence of death for murdering his captain, had accepted the alternative which was offered to him, and became a charnel-man, and drank, and grasped the infected corpses with his naked hands, and went about unwashed and unmasked, and almost always in a state of intoxication, yet exhibited no symptoms of plague to the last. What became of him eventually I do not know; but that the pest had no influence over him is certain. ate There occurred, as was to be expected in a place so visited, frequent cases both of tenderness and its opposite, which were very remarkable. Among others, the following struck me at the time, and is remembered now as more than commonly affecting. At a place called Vittorosia, not far from the magazine where Mrs. Crighton died, there dwelt a Maltese family, to what rank of life belonging I cannot tell, but certainly none of the meanest, though scarcely noble. From the non-appearance in public of any member of that household, it was surmised that the plague had broken out among them, and by and by this suspicion became confirmed in a way which moved all who saw it even to tears. There came to the balcony of that house one day two little children, the eldest about five, the youngest scarcely four years old, who, weeping bitterly, said that their father and mother, and all the rest, were asleep, and that they could not waken them. The fact was, that in that infected habitation there was no living thing except these children. All had died, and such was the horror of facing such a danger, that nobody could be prevailed upon to remove the little ones from their living tomb. Yet they were not wholly neglected. Day after day they came to the balcony, and letting down a basket by a string, their neighbours supplied them with food and drink, which they drew up for themselves and consumed. I have forgotten how long this state of things continued; but I know that it went on for some time. At last intelligence of the matter came to the governor's ears, and the police received orders to remove the children to a place more suited to their condition, while the house was cleansed of its putrefying inmates, and all the furniture burned. It was about this time that the obstinacy of the inhabitants in concealing the ravages which the plague was making among them rose to such a height, that the authorities were obliged to counterwork it by means the most vigorous. Not only would each deny that there was sickness in his dwelling, but their dead they buried under the hearths of their kitchens, in the very wells,-anywhere, in short, so that they might only escape the vigilance of the officers of the sanitary corps, and the confiscation of property which went along with it. The practice, shocking under any circumstances, but in such a case as the present pregnant with danger to themselves and others, began by degrees to be suspected by the police; and an order went forth, that the names of all who inhabited each particular house should be posted on the door, and that twice a-day they should be required to answer from the balcony, when the roll was called over. By these means many a train of infection came to light, which |