great deep been broken up, and the proud waves come rolling, as of old, over wide-extended continents, foaming around the summit of the hills, and prostrating with equal ease the grass of the field and the oak of the forest, he could not have met the inundation with a less effective resistance. It swept away in its desolating progress a hundred millions of the human species. [Sidenote: THE QUARANTINE.] In the spring of 1831 the disease entered the Russian dominions, and in a few brief months, after devastating the inland provinces, began to ravage the shores of the Baltic. The harbours, as is usual in the summer season, were crowded with vessels from every port of Britain: and the infection spread among the seamen. To guard against its introduction into this country, a rigid system of quarantine was established by the Government; and the Bay of Cromarty was one of the places appointed for the reception of vessels until their term of restriction should have expired. The whole eastern coast of Britain could not have afforded a better station; as, from the security and great extent of the bay, entire fleets can lie in it safe from every tempest, and at a distance of more than two miles from any shore. On a calm and beautiful evening in the month of July 1831, a little fleet of square-rigged vessels were espied in the offing, slowly advancing towards the bay. They were borne onwards by the tide, which, when flowing, rushes with much impetuosity through the narrow opening, and, as they passed under the northern Sutor, there was seen from the shore, relieved by the dark cliffs which frowned over them, a pale yellow flag dropping from the mast-head of each. As they advanced farther on, the tide began to recede. The foremost was towed by her boats to the common anchoring-ground; and the burden of a Danish song, in which all the rowers joined, was heard echoing over the waves with a cadence so melancholy, that, associating in the minds of the town’s-people with ideas of death and disease, it seemed a coronach of lamentation poured out over the dead and the expiring. The other vessels threw out their anchors opposite the town;--groups of people, their countenances shaded by anxiety, sauntered along the beach; and children ran about, shouting at the full pitch of their voices that the ships of the plague had got up as far as the ferry. As the evening darkened, little glimmering lights, like stars of the third magnitude, twinkled on the mast-heads from whence the yellow flags had lately depended; and never did astrologer experience greater dismay when gazing at the two comets, the fiery and the pale, which preceded those years of pestilence and conflagration that wasted the capital of England, than did some of the people of Cromarty when gazing at these lights.