were fain to sell their children for small pieces of bread. Such was the conduct of men, from one end of the earth to the other, during the interval, if any interval there was, between the plague in the time of Justinian and that of 1346. The pestilence, which had continually raged in one place or other, now overspread the whole world. At what time it began to decline we know not; and, indeed, as the same desolations and massacres continued, if these had any share in its production, it ought scarcely to have declined at all. That there was all this time little or no interval, appears from what Dr. Rush says, vol. iii. p. 165, that between the years 1006 and 1680, that is, in a period of 674 years, the plague was _fifty-two_ times epidemic all over Europe. Supposing the intervals between every general infection then to have been equal, and the plague to have lasted only one year at a time, it must have recurred once in twelve years. But the intervals were not equal; for the Doctor tells us that it prevailed _fourteen_ times in the fourteenth century; which gives an interval of less than seven years; and if the pestilence so frequently overspread the whole continent, we may be very sure that it never was out of particular places of it. The Doctor adds, “The state of Europe in this long period is well known.” We shall also consider that of Asia. The empire of the Moguls, which had fallen into decay, revived under Tamerlane; who, following the example of Jenghiz Khan, had the epithet of the _destroying prince_ bestowed upon him by the Indians, on account of his behaviour in their country. Building his captives into walls with stones and lime, pounding them by thousands in large mortars, was his common practice; while the Turks, proceeding westward, wasted every thing with fire and sword; the christians all the while continuing their mad crusades, and when driven from one place endeavouring to establish themselves in another. At last the Turks and Tartars, or Moguls, or rather their emperors, happening to quarrel, the battle of Angora, in Galatia, decided (at the expense of some hundred thousand lives) the dispute in favour of Tamerlane; but, as his empire ended with his life, the Turks soon recovered from the blow they had received; and, by the taking of Constantinople in 1453, put an end to the terrible commotions which had prevailed in the east for so many ages. The crusades had also for some time been discontinued, and the world hath since that time been comparatively in a state of peace.