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in a flame. Before it had been a rumour; but now in words uneraseable, in
definite and undeniable print, the knowledge went forth. Its obscurity of
situation rendered it the more conspicuous: the diminutive letters grew
gigantic to the bewildered eye of fear: they seemed graven with a pen of
iron, impressed by fire, woven in the clouds, stamped on the very front of
the universe.
The English, whether travellers or residents, came pouring in one great
revulsive stream, back on their own country; and with them crowds of
Italians and Spaniards. Our little island was filled even to bursting. At
first an unusual quantity of specie made its appearance with the emigrants;
but these people had no means of receiving back into their hands what they
spent among us. With the advance of summer, and the increase of the
distemper, rents were unpaid, and their remittances failed them. It was
impossible to see these crowds of wretched, perishing creatures, late
nurslings of luxury, and not stretch out a hand to save them. As at the
conclusion of the eighteenth century, the English unlocked their hospitable
store, for the relief of those driven from their homes by political
revolution; so now they were not backward in affording aid to the victims
of a more wide-spreading calamity. We had many foreign friends whom we
eagerly sought out, and relieved from dreadful penury. Our Castle became an
asylum for the unhappy. A little population occupied its halls. The revenue
of its possessor, which had always found a mode of expenditure congenial to
his generous nature, was now attended to more parsimoniously, that it might
embrace a wider portion of utility. It was not however money, except
partially, but the necessaries of life, that became scarce. It was
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