their intrusion; and robbery was the most frequent, but not the worst end to which these ill–omened visits were perverted. Other profligates too assumed their dress and ensigns, and sometimes when the true and false Monatti met, strife and bloodshed added new horrors to the sick chamber or the dying bed. The general distress, as misery is ever prone to credulity, was in no small degree increased by the most absurd and wicked reports. It was supposed that foreign princes had generated, or, at all events, were maintaining the plague, with the view of weakening the power of the state, and taking undisturbed possession of it, when reduced to a solitude. A belief was propagated, that persons were employed to besmear everything likely to be touched with the most foul and pestilential compounds. The walls of houses, the fastenings of doors, household implements, clothes, men’s persons, everything fit to spread the infection, nay, the very standing corn in the fields, now ripe for the sickle, were thought to be poisoned by some unseen enemy. The belief originated in an unexplained appearance, the result most likely of some wanton joke or malicious deception. On the morning of April 23rd, the fronts of houses throughout the whole length of the city were observed by the earliest passengers to be marked with spots, appearing as if a sponge filled with the matter of the plague–sores had been pressed against them. The whole population ere long was in a commotion, and poured out to see this strange phenomenon; but this was before the fury of the pestilence, and the alarm created was forgotten, until revived by the increasing mortality. Then reports were circulated, and greedily received, that emissaries of hostile princes were diligently engaged in spreading infectious poison through the city; nay, that the powers of hell, as well as human principalities, were leagued against it, and that the devil had taken a house in Milan, where his head–quarters were established, and the pestiferous unguents prepared and distributed. One man related how, as he stood in front of the cathedral, he saw a chariot drawn by six white horses, and followed by a numerous attendance, in which a person sat, of princely demeanour, though his dark and deep–burnt complexion, his floating hair, the fire of his eye, and the threatening expression of his lip, gave such an air to the countenance as he had never beheld on mortal face. The stranger stopped before him, and bade him mount. He complied, and was carried to a house which appeared like many others; but on entering, he saw strange and wonderful things, in which majesty was mixed with horrors, delight with fear. In one part thick–flashing lightning dispelled the seeming night which reigned elsewhere: here a spectral senate held its meetings; there vast empty chambers and gardens extended, and from the brow of a dimly–seen rock waters poured abundantly into a basin placed