"Put together," says Voltaire, "all the vices of all ages and places, and they will not come up to the mischiefs of one campaign."[304] This strong speech is supported by the story of ancient mythology, that Juno confided the infant Mars to Priapus. Another of nearer truth might be made. Put together all the ills and calamities from the visitations of God, whether in convulsions of Nature, or in pestilence and famine, and they will not equal the ills and calamities inflicted by man upon his brother-man, through the visitation of War,--while, alas! the sufferings of War are too often without the alleviation of those gentle virtues which ever attend the involuntary misfortunes of the race. Where the horse of Attila had been a blade of grass would not grow; but in the footprints of pestilence, famine, and earthquake the kindly charities spring into life. [304] Dictionnaire Philosophique, Art. _Guerre_. The last hundred years have witnessed three peculiar visitations of God: first, the earthquake at Lisbon; next, the Asiatic cholera, as it moved slow and ghastly, with scythe of death, from the Delta of the Ganges over Bengal, Persia, Arabia, Syria, Russia, till Europe and America shuddered before the spectral reaper; and, lastly, the recent famine in Ireland, consuming with remorseless rage the population of that ill-starred land. It is impossible to estimate precisely the deadly work of cholera or famine, nor can we picture the miseries which they entailed; but the single brief event of the earthquake may be portrayed in authentic colors. Lisbon, whose ancient origin is referred by fable to the wanderings of Ulysses, was one of the fairest cities of Europe. From the summit of seven hills it looked down upon the sea, and the bay bordered with cheerful villages,--upon the broad Tagus, expanding into a harbor ample for all the navies of Europe,--and upon a country of rare beauty, smiling with the olive and the orange, amidst grateful shadows of the cypress and the elm. A climate offering flowers in winter enhanced the peculiar advantages of position; and a numerous population thronged its narrow and irregular streets. Its forty churches, its palaces, its public edifices, its warehouses, its convents, its fortresses, its citadel, had become a boast. Not by War, not by the hand of man, were these solid structures levelled, and all these delights changed to desolation.