Thus
far we in England have escaped its ravages. Experts--and experts are
the people whose vocation it is to speak without doubt or hesitation
whenever they speak--experts assure us that London was never more
free from cholera than during this present summer. Other experts--
they too speaking with authority--confidently affirm that our time is
coming, that a severe visitation is impending; that all we have heard
of hitherto of the ravages of the epidemic elsewhere, will prove but
child's play in comparison with that which we shall hear of by and
by. "And then, sir, you'll see!" That is a comforting assurance--at
any rate, _some_ of us will survive.
But what do we know of the march of any mysterious form of death that
has ever appeared in bygone ages, suddenly starting up and striding
over the earth--"the land as a garden of Eden before him, and behind
him a desolate wilderness?" We have most of us read of such frightful
visitations in Thucydides, in Ovid, in Virgil, in Lucretius, not to
mention the moderns; but if any of us were to write down the sum and
substance of his knowledge, and attempt to discover from any
trustworthy evidence the nature, the course, and the intensity of any
great plague that has ever proved a real scourge upon any large
section of the human race, what would his summing-up amount to? How
long would it take to write; or rather, when it was written, how long
would it take to read?
This island of Great Britain has more than once been visited by
pestilence.
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