THE PLAGUE AT FLORENCE. By the late Charles Ed,DardS, Esq.
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The weather during the whole of the spring and summer preceding the visitation, had been unusually close and sultry. Foul and offensive exhalations had proceeded, in a remarkable degree. from all pools, and fens, and marshes, in the neigh borhood of the city. The bed of the ArnO, though afterwards replenished by sudden and heavy rains, had at one period sunk lower than the oldest citizen ever remembered to have seen it. Insects, moreover, in all fields and gardens, had appeared in numbers quite unprecedented; so as even, in many places, combined with the effect oft the drought, to destroy vegetation. And-a circumstance which still more attracted nOtice-the rats, both in the houses of Florence, and in the farms in the neighbouring villages, multiplied with such rapidity, and to such an excess, that, all temporal remedies being found una valing, it was thought necessary to have re- course to the aid of the Church, and formally to ercou1nt,L,licdte them. The success Of this extraordinary measure, or how far it operated at all, does not appear; hut the fact of its be-

 ing applied, is distinctly stated in all the chron icles of the time. Notice was formally read, in open church, against the rats; that, unless they withdrew from all houses, wheat stacks, barns or granaries. in Florence and the vicin ,ty. within four days from the date of those presents, process of " deprivation" would be issued against them. And curious feature in the superstition ot the times, vas, that the officer of the spiritual court, appointed to maintain the interests of all "non-appearinG defendants" interfered for tue ratS, and actu- ally obtained leave to " enlarge the rule" for their departure from four days to six on the ground that the cats of the city, knowing oi the order, would be upon the watch to inter- .cept them.

 During a considerable time, however from whatever cause the distemper in Florence