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end of the ward she espied, on a wretched bed, a squalid, haggard creature,
writhing under the torture of disease. She rushed towards him, she embraced
him, blessing God for his preservation.
The enthusiasm that inspired her with this strange joy, blinded her to the
horrors about her; but they were intolerably agonizing to me. The ward was
filled with an effluvia that caused my heart to heave with painful qualms.
The dead were carried out, and the sick brought in, with like indifference;
some were screaming with pain, others laughing from the influence of more
terrible delirium; some were attended by weeping, despairing relations,
others called aloud with thrilling tenderness or reproach on the friends
who had deserted them, while the nurses went from bed to bed, incarnate
images of despair, neglect, and death. I gave gold to my luckless
companion; I recommended her to the care of the attendants; I then hastened
away; while the tormentor, the imagination, busied itself in picturing my
own loved ones, stretched on such beds, attended thus. The country afforded
no such mass of horrors; solitary wretches died in the open fields; and I
have found a survivor in a vacant village, contending at once with famine
and disease; but the assembly of pestilence, the banqueting hall of death,
was spread only in London.
I rambled on, oppressed, distracted by painful emotions--suddenly I found
myself before Drury Lane Theatre. The play was Macbeth--the first actor
of the age was there to exert his powers to drug with irreflection the
auditors; such a medicine I yearned for, so I entered. The theatre was
tolerably well filled. Shakspeare, whose popularity was established by the
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