he could kneel no longer. Then he sat on the body, still clutching the neck of the tunic. But the hours went on, and no witness came.

No eyes descried afar off the two human bodies among the tall grass by the river-side. Florence was busy with greater affairs, and the preparation of a deeper tragedy.

Not long after those two bodies were lying in the grass, Savonarola was being tortured and crying out in his agony, "I will confess!"

It was not until the sun was westward that a waggon drawn by a mild grey ox came to the edge of the grassy margin, and as the man who led it was leaning to gather up the round stones that lay heaped in readiness to be carried away, he detected some startling object in the grass. The aged man had fallen forward, and his dead clutch was on the garment of the other. It was not possible to separate them: nay, it was better to put them into the waggon and carry them as they were into the great Piazza, that notice might be given to the Eight.

As the waggon entered the frequented streets there was a growing crowd escorting it with its strange burden. No one knew the bodies for a long while, for the aged face had fallen forward, half hiding the younger. But before they had been moved out of sight, they had been recognized.

"I know that old man," Piero di Cosimo had testified. "I painted his likeness once. He is the prisoner who clutched Melema on the steps of

the Duomo."

"He is perhaps the same old man who appeared at supper in my gardens," said Bernardo Rucellai, one of the Eight. "I had forgotten him-I thought he had died in prison. But there is no knowing the truth now."

Who shall put his finger on the work of justice, and say, "It is there?" Justice is like the kingdom of God-it is not without us as a fact, it is within us as a great yearning.

35

Over-eating and Under-eating.

MOST persons are accustomed to think of starvation merely in its acute form, with the accompaniments of a death preceded by horrible suffering; and they can scarcely realize to themselves the less conspicuous but not less fatal influence which in its partial form it exerts as an abettor of disease. Let us try and realize what this influence is, under two or three different sets of circumstances. And first with regard to its mischievous action upon the infant population. We are well accustomed to speak of the period of infancy as a perilous one; and the public is tolerably familiar with the fact that an enormous proportion of the whole mortality occurs in subjects under the age of five years; but people seldom reason out to themselves the cause of this extraordinary and disproportionate fatality of disease in the very young: it does not seem to occur to them that the very diseases which decimate the infant population are just those which always fall with most crushing force on the ill fed. But ask the physician of any children's hospital what are the maladies which make most havoc with their little patients, and they will tell you, first of all, the epidemic fevers, the inflammatory diseases which are common at certain seasons of the year, intestinal complaints, and next to these, consumption, rickets, scrofula, diseases of the nervous system of a low type. If you have any doubt that starvation plays a large part in the production of such diseases as these, go to the homes of these children, and look at the multiplied appliances of it which meet the eye on every side. The poor, pallid, ill-fed mothers can hardly give a very rich supply of food to their infants during the time of their dependence on them, and then, when the time comes for artificial feeding, all the powers of ignorance come into play as auxiliaries and fosterers of disease. The proper feeding of a new-weaned infant is a most difficult problem, and it is usually solved by those poor mothers by an abrupt transition to the administration of food only suited to the nourishment of adults, and a small part only of which, with infinite distress to the infant, can get assimilated. And did the mothers ever so well understand the principles of infant dietetics, there are terrible hindrances in the way of their carrying them out, in many cases arising from the nature of their avocations. The young growing animal requires above all things that its food should be administered at short intervals, but the occupations of many poor women detain them from their homes for hours together; and in the meanwhile the infants are often intrusted to some ignorant nurse, or elder child.

A little examination of the Registrar-General's tables will show us the unmistakable traces of these evil influences. One of the first things we

notice is that, if we take any year at random, and calculate the propertion between the mortality at all ages, and that during the first year of life, we soon perceive that there is a great and constant difference between different districts of the country in this respect. If we take the three districts— Lancashire, London, and the Eastern registral division-we get the following results :-In the year 1858 we find that in London the mortality at ages under one year was 22.2 per cent. of the total number of deaths; in the Eastern district, 22-6; whilst in Lancashire it was as high as 25 per cent. In the year 1855 the mortality of infants under one year old wasin London, 21 per cent. of the deaths at all ages; in the Eastern district, 22.4 per cent.; in Lancashire, 25 per cent.: while the mortality under the age of one year in the whole of England was, in the year 1858, only 23.5 per cent., and in 1855 only 22.9 per cent. of the deaths at all ages. If we examine the ratio which the deaths occurring between the ages of one and two years bear to the whole mortality during these two years, we shall find equally constant differences in the different districts. Thus, in 1855, the deaths at this age were-in London, 9.09 per cent. of the whole mortality; in Lancashire, 10-22 per cent.; in the Eastern division, only 5.49 per cent; while the avarage for all England was 7·65 per cent. of the general mortality. In 1858, the deaths between the ages of one and two years were-in London, 10.48 per cent.; in Lancashire, 10.96 per cent.; and in the Eastern division, only 5.68 per cent. of the general mortality: the average proportion for all England being 8.33 per cent.

The above figures, which are fully supported by more extended observations, which we have not space to detail here, bring strongly into relief the following facts:-1. The mortality during the first year of life is very considerably higher, in proportion to the total number of deaths, in Lancashire than either in London or the more sparsely populated Eastern district; between the two latter there is a small difference in favour of London; both of them are decidedly below the average for all England in this respect, and Lancashire is much above it. 2. The mortality during the second year of life is also higher in proportion to the deaths at all ages in Lancashire than either in London or the Eastern district : but in this case London nearly comes up to Lancashire, both being very greatly above the average for all England, while the Eastern district is almost as much below.

Now, seeing that there is such an immunity from danger to life during the first year in London, as compared with Lancashire, while in the second year this difference is almost done away with, and London becomes also extraordinarily fatal, we are driven to look for a special cause for these peculiarities. This cause is evidently constant, and not epidemic: and among constant causes there are none which are reconcileable with the facts already mentioned, except peculiarity of nutrition. Upon this hypothesis much that is difficult to understand might be readily explained. Both Lancashire and London are crowded districts, with a large poor popu

lation; any cause, then, of mortality existing generally among the poor will make itself quickly felt in the general tables for these districts. In Lancashire the occupations of poor women have a great tendency to make them neglect the feeding of their infants, even from the first, and at every subsequent stage. In London, on the contrary, during the first year, the infants, for the most part, receive the food which Nature has provided for them with tolerable regularity; but during the second year all sorts of mischief arise from the operation of two causes- -(a) the improper continuance, by many poor women, of nursing, and (b) the employment of unsuitable artificial food, through sheer ignorance or prejudice.

Of course, if defective nutrition be the cause of so much of the fatal sickness that occurs among young children, the poor class will afford the most numerous cases; but it must not be supposed that there are none in the ranks of the wealthier. Ignorance and prejudice are not entirely confined to the indigent; and a large number of better-class children yearly fall victims to the extraordinary perversity and stupidity of nurses and mothers in their ideas of what forms a proper artificial food for a young infant. The commonest of common sense would seem to dictate that no very violent change should be made from the elements of food which were provided in the first place by nature; but this idea receives but small attention; and then, when the little unfortunates have fits it is put down to "the teeth;" or if their limbs become crooked, it is all laid to the blame of some servant who allowed them to walk too soon. That last sentence about crooked limbs reminds us that the disease of which it is a symptom-" rickets "-is a valuable illustration of the inexorable manner in which nature revenges outrages on her own plain indications. M. Guérin, a great authority upon this subject, made experiments upon animals, by which he proved the possibility of inducing artificial "rickets" at will by merely separating the young too early from their mothers, and feeding them with artificial food suited to the adult condition. There can be no doubt that in all these cases of improper infant feeding, partial starvation is induced, both by the imperfect assimilation of the food, and by the diminution of digestive power which is brought about.

The diseases of children caused by imperfect nutrition have received a most interesting and unexpected illustration in the course of the present cotton famine. The ill reputation of Lancashire for infant mortality has been already referred to. It now remains to be noted that, during the recent distress, this mortality has become most markedly less, notwithstanding the diminished resources of the parents. The explanation, on the principles already laid down, is simple: the mothers are now unemployed, and have time to attend to the feeding of their children; and they are far more skilful at this task than the incompetent persons to whom it is ordinarily confided, by whom the little creatures are, in plain truth, slowly starved in great numbers, or, at least, so weakened as to be unable to resist slight shocks of disease, particularly of epidemic diseases.

It is during infancy that the results of partial starvation are most fatal, as might be expected. But its influence is obvious enough at later stages of life. Thus, the growing boy or girl not only becomes stunted and ill-formed, but special tendencies to disease develop themselves with the development of the body, the nervous system being particularly apt to suffer. In one instance, the brain is ill-developed and intelligence is low, in other cases an unnatural tendency to convulsive diseases is set up, in consequence of the general feebleness of the nervous centres, and the child becomes epileptic or hysterical, or gets St. Vitus' dance-diseases which may be produced by many other causes, but which, among the poor, certainly depend principally on deficient or innutritious food. Both in youth and in adult life the consequences of such deficiency are Protean in the shapes which they assume, ranging from the dreaded typhus-epidemics, which announce the existence of extreme and wide-spread destitution, through all the shades of bodily disorder consequent on lowered nutrition, till we come to a point at which it has no more distinct and tangible result than the production of rheumatism, according as the deprivation of food is greater or less, and according as it is general or merely restricts the choice of food-materials.

It may be well at the present time, when we are all so much interested by the famine in the cotton districts, to refer to the circumstances, so far as they can now be recalled, of another period of scarcity—the potato-famine, which was felt most severely in 1847-48. In Lancashire, the evil effects of high prices of food were aggravated by the fact that there was a lack of employment during many months; and the consequences were terrible: typhus fever was developed with great severity, and scurvy also appeared. But with the resumption of full work at the mills the public health soon improved. The course of events was otherwise in the agricultural counties. The case of Wiltshire is sufficiently interesting to be worth inquiring into. In the whole of this county wages have been, and still are, low, especially in the northern division; so much lower than those of the Lancashire districts that the manner of feeding of the people is radically different in the two counties. As to the absolute quantity of food used in Wiltshire by the poorer class of labourers, I shall have more to say hereafter; at present it is sufficient to say that it can hardly have been much higher, in 1847-48, in a large part of the county, than that now obtainable by the unemployed of Lancashire by means of various sources of relief. The result was a large increase of mortality. The ordinary average for the county being 2.075 per cent. of the whole population, it rose in 1847 to 2.219; in 1848, to 2.236; and in 1849 (year of the cholera), to 2-285; these three years stand out in bad pre-eminence over all others. Yet the true type of famine-typhus was never developed, so far as can be discovered. And in connection with this fact, it is interesting to note that in the cotton districts at the

This county is selected merely as an example of the low-paid agricultural districts,