been heard of, that no lady, however elegant, or fair, or young, if taken ill, would object to have a man in attendance on her, be he what he might, young or old, or was ashamed to discover to him any part of her person, just as she would have done to a woman, if the need of her disorder did but require it: and this perhaps in after times, rendered those who recovered less scrupulous in their conduct. The same want of attendance also occasioned the death of many, who might perhaps have escaped if they had had assistance; and thus partly for want of fitting services, which the sick could not have, and partly from the violence of the plague, the number of those who died day and night in the city was so great, that it was astounding even to hear, much more to see: and thus, almost of necessity, there arose among those who were left alive practices contrary to the former custom of the citizens. “It was the custom, as we still it see to this day, that female relations and friends assembled in the house of the deceased, and there bewailed him, with his yet nearer female connexions. And his male neighbours and many of his townsmen, with his own nearest friends, met separately from the women before his house; and thither, according to his rank, came also the clergy, and the deceased was borne on the shoulders of men of his own rank, with funeral ceremony of wax tapers and chanting, to the church which he had chosen for a burial–place before his death. But these observances, after the fury of the plague began to rise, almost entirely ceased, and other new practices came in their room. For not only did people die without having many women about them, but there were a good many who passed away from this life without having any one to witness it: and few indeed were those, to whom were granted the piteous lamentations and bitter tears of their connexions. On the contrary, instead of these, were heard in most cases laughter, and jests, and good fellowship: and ladies for the most part laying aside the tenderness of their sex, had very completely made themselves masters of this practice, as thinking it for their own safety. And few were there whose bodies were followed to the church by more than ten or a dozen of their neighbours; and the bier was not borne by honourable citizens, friends of the deceased, but a sort of grave–diggers who came from the lowest order of the people, and did these services for hire, took it up and carried it with hurried steps, not to the church which he had himself appointed before his death, but generally to the nearest, following four or six clergy with few tapers, and generally without any; and then the priests with the assistance of these grave–diggers, without troubling themselves about any over long or solemn offices, laid the corpse as quick as possible in the first burial–place which they found unoccupied. The condition of the lowest class, and probably of a great part of the middle class, was full of