And "Hope" worked strange wonders in the earlier stages of the plague; especially among those who had all to gain and little to lose; a sort of persons, whose fearlessness, and spirit of reliance, since the world began, has always been proverbial. There is a point to which you civilise mankind; but beyond which education cannot go. You seem to tame the wolf, while he sees you hold the whip over him: but--blood will have its way--he flies at your throat at last, if you give him opportunity. Man's instinct makes him war on man! 'Tis trash! my strength _must_ be my neighbour's weakness. The miller, when his granaries are full, laughs loud, and well he laughs--he buys a lordship--out of the ruined harvest. What is that flood that wastes my neighbour's fields but blessing, so it doubles, in the common market, the produce of my own? Go to! they who gain by the dead, when did they love the living? When agues thrive, do not the sextons delve merrily? Does not the surgeon fatten on the miseries, the headsman on the vices of mankind? In no general blessing yet did all men ever find contentment; in no common infliction have there not always been some who saw a good. Battles and blood make soldiers generals. Revolts and revolutions peasants princes. Out of broken windows, as the adage tells us, do there not arise rich glaziers? And he who _wants_ a fortune may find one even in the PLAGUE. And, accordingly, among the most curious results of the visitation, when it first began to show its strength in Florence, was the extra quantity of actual rejoicing, as well as of mourning; the great increase of hilarity in the midst of tears; and the decided, immediate gain to individuals, which arose out of the thinning in the numbers of the community. Husbands, many, wept for the death of their wives; wives, often, for the death of their husbands; both, constantly, for the deaths of their children; for these were, generally, losses, at least in some sort, of present sources of happiness; disturbances of long habit and existing arrangements; and no benefit (to balance) accruing to the survivor. But sons did not always mourn for their fathers--nephews for their uncles--younger brothers, destined to exertion and poverty, for their elders, who had shut them from title and estate: those who were the best disposed to do all this, often could not do it; their wants, in spite of themselves, were relieved, and their desires of pleasure administered to--they thought that they grieved for the fate of the dead--perhaps they did grieve; but before the bell had ceased tolling, they would not have had him live again. For even the comparatively poor who died, had _something_ to leave behind them, which was an object to those as poor, or poorer, than themselves. Very soon the constant occurrence of such falls of fortune began to make men expect and look for them. They could not help recollecting the fact, that there was _one_ particular life stood between them and happiness.