died soon after his arrival. Cardinal Altieri went over to change the air, but seeing that matters were 'brutte,' to use my correspondent's own term, returned immediately to Rome, bad as things were there. So did most of those who had taken refuge in Albano, but, unhappily, many of these were taken ill on arriving, and succumbed."

It then followed our army to the Crimea, and mowed down far more than the cannon of the Muscovite. It returned in 1866, visiting France, Germany, Italy, and struck the east part of London with destructive force, and, after three months' devastation, it retired, only to return with yet greater violence. The cholera has broken out in 1867 with increased virulence in Sicily, and in Italy, and Rome.

The Times, August 20, 1867, thus writes:-"The accounts of the cholera in Italy are such as the prevalence of excessive heat throughout the continent had naturally led us to expect. Though some of the northern parts of the peninsula have not altogether escaped, yet there is reason to hope that the worst is over, so far as those regions are concerned, owing chiefly to the energy displayed by the population, who have fought the disease with the only weapons which could insure victory, the mop and the scrubbing-brush, and effected a thorough cleansing of their persons and habitations. The same cannot be said of the south, where, as we learn from our Naples correspondent, the pestilence was powerfully aided by the incredible ignorance and cowardice, by the suspicion

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and violence of the multitude, where 'the conductors of disinfecting machines were stoned,' where ‘old women were burnt,' where the sick are left untended, and the dead lie unburied, where the very zeal of physicians and nurses, of civil and military authorities, was frustated by the blindness of a rabble determined to see in their sufferings, not the plain result of natural causes, but the hidden working of malevolent human designs.

"The disease itself, however, and the concomitant evils of abject panic and selfish demoralization, have nowhere risen to so tragic a climax as within that narrow strip of territory which now constitutes the Papal dominions. Symptoms of cholera, as the reader is aware, showed themselves in Rome and the neighbourhood as early as the middle of last May. The court of Rome was, however, at that epoch intent on its preparations for the gathering of all the bishops of the Catholic world. The existence of any epidemic in the holy city at such a time was scouted as an impossibility, and the very mention of cholera was denounced as a wicked calumny' of the Liberals. The meeting of the prelates was held in June, and the sanitary state of the place was not improved by the presence of so many strangers, especially of some squalid and grizzly churchmen from the East, who, however eminent for their godliness, were not equally remarkable for that virtue which is said to be next akin to it. Scouted and tabooed as the cholera was during the celebration of the centenary, it continued

to lurk about the Papal city till, after the flight of the birds of passage, the government, left alone with its subjects, ventured on a guarded acknowledgment of the existence, not of the Asiatic plague, but of a 'morbo occulto,' a mysterious disease which bore a somewhat ominous resemblance to cholera, but still was not cholera.' Without waiting to ascertain the real nature of this unknown visitor, the noble and wealthy part of the Roman population fled from it, as they usually do at this season from their malaria fever, and betook themselves to the Alban and Tusculan hills, which is their ordinary summer resort. Happy days for the little town of Albano were the first Sunday and Monday of the present month. The élite of the native and foreign company still lingering about the Papal court had taken refuge within its walls. Its inns and lodging-houses, and the villas dotting its verdant environs, were thronged with distinguished guests. The family of the ex-King of Naples, with their aristocratic adherents, gave zest to its social entertainments, and, to crown all, the sovereign Pontiff himself was daily expected to quit the Vatican, and repair for fresh air to his usual summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. On the two abovementioned days there had been festivities at Ariccia and Marino. The population of these two towns and of Albano had been swarming together on the high roads, and the nights were spent in music, dancing, and feasting. On the morning of the 6th the awakening was terrific. The cholera was in Albano.

No attempt was made to call it by any other name. 150 to 200 cases, out of a population of 4000 souls, were said to have broken out in the night, two-thirds of which had proved fatal. The Dowager Queen of Naples, Maria Theresa, Baron Werther, the Bavarian minister, the Princess Colonna, the Marchese Serlupi, who only two months ago here in London expressed his full faith that 'the cholera was only a wicked invention of the enemies of the holy see,' were among the earliest victims. On the first spread of alarm there was a general rush from the town. Frantic with terror, they laid violent hand on such conveyances as the place afforded. The rest trudged after on foot, pêle-mêle, crowding the thoroughfares, making for Ariccia, Genzano, and other places, where, however, the startling tidings had preceded them, and where they found the peasantry in arms, drawn up as a sanitary cordon, and ready to drive them back at the point of their pitchforks. The helpless fugitives returned to Albano, and hence there was a grand 'stampede' upon Rome, whither the confused mass. travelled, closely pressed by the angel of death, which struck some in the retreat, and overtook others immediately upon their arrival. A crowd of priests and civil functionaries from Albano beset the palace of their bishop, Cardinal Altieri, one of the wellknown princely family of that name. This cardinal is, or rather was, a very pillar of the holy see, and he showed a courage which was wanting in all around him. He met the fugitives with scorn and rebuke,

recalled them to a sense of their duty, led them back to the plague-stricken place, and, with a devotion of which, to do them justice, the Roman Catholic clergy, high and low, especially in Italy, have always given signal proofs, he set about the energetic performance of his duty, took the fatal disease, and died. All honour to the pastor who gives his life for his flock, all honour to the soldiers who brave death in the sick ward with the same intrepidity as they would be expected to display in the battle-field !

"Rome will stick to her fatalist faith to the end of time. She will, as she has done, stoutly deny the existence of the pestilence till the country is turned into a charnel-house; acknowledge it when it has gained the upper hand, and there is nothing to be done but to succumb to it; and then, upon the first symptom of relief, go back to her old ways, equally incapable of learning from the past or providing for the future."

The Paris correspondent of the Times, writing on Tuesday, August 20, 1867, states:-"The cholera is making numerous victims in Italy. There are many letters in the Paris and Marseilles papers relating the ravages of this pestilence. At the beginning of this month Palermo, by measures of unusual rigour, was striving to keep off the disease. Clean bills of health were insisted upon, and fumigation was enforced. A few days later the inhabitants were flying from their infected city. By sea and by land, in all kinds of vessels and vehicles, the Palermitans abandoned