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example, in Tothill Fields, Westminster, not far from the venerable Abbey and the present Houses of Parliament and St. James's Palace, there was one of these pest-houses.

The signs of the plague smote the ear quite as often as they smote the eye. Passing along a street a person would often hear a sudden shrill scream. The window would be thrown up, and some miserable wretch, stricken by disease, and almost frantic, would endeavour to leap into the street. The truth is, the plague came coupled with delirium, and the man of strongest mind became by its visitation as foolish as he who was born a lunatic.

The Great Fire of London, which broke out on the 2nd September, 1666, was beneficial, although at the moment it entailed on many persons great poverty or utter ruin. It burnt down the narrow, dirty streets of old wooden houses in which the infection still lurked. The city was purified by fire.

The plague of 1666 was not confined to London. Far away in the north, where the High Peak stretches like a back-bone from northern Derbyshire to the confines of Yorkshire, it laid its victims in the dust. Pleasantly situated among the limestone rocks of Derbyshire, and close to Chatsworth, the almost kingly residence of the Dukes of Devonshire, is the little village of Eyam. At the time the plague broke out in London Eyam contained 330 persons. The name of the clergyman of the village was Mompesson. A tailor in Eyam received from London a box of cloth -such at least is the account given by Dr. Mead in his narration of the Great Plague;—the box was opened, the tailor was seized by illness and shortly afterwards died; his wife and children likewise fell ill, and were soon laid by his side in Eyam graveyard. From the tailor's house the plague spread rapidly throughout the village. The churchyard, being small, was soon too full to contain more bodies. Graves were made in the surrounding hill-sides and fields. Mr. Mompesson-a young man with a wife and two children-determined to remain at his post and attend to the sick, and to employ every argument to persuade his people not to leave the village, and not to be the means of spreading an agonizing death in the neighbouring towns and hamlets. The Duke of Devonshire also determined to remain at Chatsworth and assist the clergyman. But how were the villagers' wants to be supplied without some intercourse with the people of the surrounding places? The duke and Mr. Mompesson, having consulted together, appointed bounds beyond which the inhabitants were not to pass. To these bounds the dealers

from the neighbourhood were to bring provisions. Had the dealers taken money from the hands of their customers at Eyam the infection would have stalked through the county, and Sheffield, lying to the north, and Derby, lying to the south, might have lost the great mass of their populations. To prevent such evil the people placed the money in a trough of clear spring water. Mr. Mompesson did not collect his people in the church for service. Sunday after Sunday they assembled for worship in the open air in Cucklett Dale, in which a little stream ran brawling along, having craggy limestone rocks on the one side and spreading trees on the other.

During seven months Mr. Mompesson and his wife laboured among the people. At the close of that period the plague became less virulent. Then the surviving villagers began to reflect upon the courageous, wise, and fatherly conduct of their parson. Not yet, however, was the danger passed. Mrs. Mompesson was seized by the plague and rapidly sank. Her tomb may be seen at Eyam. Mr. Mompesson's noble conduct soon became generally known. He was made a prebendary of a cathedral, and might have been appointed the Dean of Lincoln. The deanery, however, he would not accept, but requested that it might be conferred upon his friend Dr. Fuller, the author of 'British Worthies,' the 'Holy War,' and other works.

The population of Eyam was reduced by the plague from 330 to 71; thus 259 persons were laid low. The spot where Mr. Mompesson preached on Sundays to his people, and the hillsides where the dead were buried, are at the present time pointed out to the visitor.

The Eyam estate descended from King John to the Stafford family, to whom it was given for military services, and on condition that a lamp should be kept burning perpetually before the altar of St. Helen in the parish church of Eyam. No lamp now burns there; the estate does not belong to the Stafford family, but is part of the broad lands belonging to the Dukes of Devonshire. Its population has increased, but it is still a village. Bakewell, near it, which in 1666 was a humble village, is now a markettown. Since 1666 Chatsworth gardens and green slopes have been improved by art; and the brain of Sir Joseph Paxtonthe designer of the Crystal Palace of the year 1851-has been busily employed to adorn the grounds of the noted Derbyshire estate" the gem of the Peak," as it has been called.

The visitor to Eyam, by extending his journey northward, may visit a building, namely, the ruins of Beauchief Abbey, which is

not only interesting in point of architecture, but also on account of its connexion with early English annals. Four knights hastening to Canterbury murdered Thomas à Becket, the archbishop, in the cathedral. One of the knights was Robert Fitz-Ranulph, Lord of Alfreton, Norton, and Marnham. By way of giving some outward proof of his sorrow for the crime which he had helped to commit, he founded the abbey of Beauchief in Derbyshire in A.D. 1183. Such is the account given by Dugdale and Bishop Tanner. Sir James Mackintosh's account differs from theirs. He gives the names of the four knights as William Tracy, Hugh de Moreville, Richard Britto, and Reginald Fitz-Urse. He states that, despairing of pardon, they found refuge in the Castle of Knaresborough, Knaresborough being the town of Hugh de Moreville. Sir James Mackintosh's authority is Hoveden, and he adds that the four knights afterwards went to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage, where they died, and were buried before the gate of the temple at Jerusalem.

A tour in the still days of autumn through the Peak country by Eyam, Bakewell, Buxton, and Peveril Castle—the spot rendered famous by Sir Walter Scott's novel 'Peveril of the Peak’ -affords much pleasure to those who admire inland scenery. But Eyam deserves, for Mompesson's sake, the following lines, which have been dedicated to his memory by a well-known writer:

"Among the verdant mountains of the Peak

There lies a quiet hamlet, where the slope

Of pleasant uplands wards the north wind bleak.
Below, wild dells, romantic pathways ope;
Around, above it, spreads a shadowy cope
Of forest trees; flower, foliage, and clear rill
Wave from the cliffs, or down the ravines slope.
It seems a place charmed from the power of ill
By sainted words of old; so lovely, lorn, and still.

And many are the pilgrims' feet which tread
Its rocky steps, which thither yearly go;
Yet less by love of Nature's wonders led
Than by the memory of a mighty woe

Which smote like blasting thunder long ago

The peopled hills. There stands a sacred tomb,

Where tears have rained, nor yet shall cease to flow,

Recording days of death's sublimest gloom,

Mompesson's power and pain-his beauteous Catherine's doom."

With the exception of Asiatic cholera, no very virulent contagious disease has visited England since the days of the plague; and under improved regulations as to ventilation, cleanliness,

drainage, light, and space, it seems that the attacks of such diseases may be warded off or greatly diminished in power. But for all time, the Rev. Mr. Mompesson's noble exertions will excite affection among those persons to whom earnest devotion and sympathetic kindness are objects of admiration and respect.— John Flint.

GEORGE STEPHENSON.

GEORGE STEPHENSON was born on the 9th of June, 1781, in the colliery village of Wylam, about eight miles to the west of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, amid slag and cinders, in an ordinary labourer's cottage, with unplastered walls, bare rafters, and floor of clay. His father, "Old Bob," was the worthy descendant of an ancient and honourable line of working men, and his mother, Mabel, was "a rale canny body;" but, the wages of the former as a fireman, amounting to no more than twelve shillings a week, schooling for George was out of the question, and he was taken by his father bird-nesting, or told stories about Sinbad and Robinson Crusoe, as a substitute. His interest in birds' nests never left him to his dying day, nor was the serious business of his life less identified with the sights of his childhood. Before the cottage door in which he was born there ran a tram-road, on which the coal-waggons were then dragged by horses from the pit to the loading-quay. When eight years had passed, the family removed to Dewley Burn, and George, to his great joy, was elevated to the post of cowboy to a neighbouring farmer, at the wage of twopence a day.

At first, however, he had leisure to develope his tastes and accomplishments. He still spent much time in bird-nesting, also in making whistles out of reeds and scrannel-straws, and erecting Lilliputian mills in the little water-streams that ran into the Dewley Bog. There can be no doubt that he indicated thus early that bent which is termed a mechanical genius. His favourite amusement-and this deserves to be noted-was the erection of clay engines, in conjunction with a certain Bill Thirlwall. The boys found the clay for their engines in the adjoining bog, and the hemlock which grew about supplied them with abundance of imaginary steam-pipes. The place is still pointed out "just aboon the cut end," as the people of the

hamlet describe it, where the future engineer made his first essays in modelling.

But a rise in life came, with which these occupations were hardly compatible, for George passed from a pastoral to an agricultural sphere, doubling his wages by undertaking to hoe turnips. Then he was taken on at the colliery as a "picker," at sixpence a day, afterwards he was advanced to be driver of the ginhorse, at eightpence; and there are those who still remember him in that capacity as a "grit bare-legged laddie," whom they describe as "quick-witted and full of fun and tricks." At fourteen years of age he became fireman, and earned one shilling per day.

At

From this point his fortunes took him from one pit to another, and procured him rising wages with his rising stature. Throckley Bridge, when advanced to twelve shillings a week, "I am now," said he, "a made man for life." At seventeen he shot ahead of old Bob himself, being made an engineman, or plugman, while the latter remained a fireman. He soon studied and mastered the working of his engine, and it became a sort of pet with him. His greatest privilege was to find some one who could read to him by the engine fire out of any book or stray newspaper which found its way into the colliery. Thus he learnt that the Egyptians hatched birds' eggs by artificial heat, and was prompted to do the same in his engine-house. Also, he learned that the wonderful engines of Watt and Boulton were to be found described in books, and with the object of mastering these books, though a grown man, he went to a night school at threepence a week, to learn his letters. For fourpence a week he included "figuring," while at the pit he learnt the art of brakeing an engine, though not without opposition from a fellow-workman. Brakeing an engine was one of the highest departments of colliery labour, and when Stephenson was appointed brakesman at the Dolly Pit, and earned nearly one pound per week, he made overtures to one Fanny Henderson, a pretty farm servant, to share it. At this time, during his leisure hours, he added to his income by making and mending the shoes of his fellow-workmen; and on one occasion he was favoured with the shoes of his sweetheart, to sole. Here his heart was in the stitches, and he lingered over his task, carrying the shoes about with him, looking at them from time to time, and exclaiming "What a capital job I have made of them!" And a capital job it proved, for he was shortly married to the fair owner, who made him an excellent wife, and brought com

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