They were still more irritated atarcely any b excitement of novelty, even
though it proceeded from a demoniacal influence. Some of the
affected had indeed themselves declared, when under the influence
of priestly forms of exorcism, that if the demons had been allowed
only a few weeks' more time, they would have entered the bodies of
the nobility and princes, ythood were, on this account,
so much the more zealous in their endeavours to anticipate every
dangerous excit months the St. John's dancers were no
longer to be found in any of the cities of Belgium. The evil,
however, was too deeply rooted to give way altogether to such
feeble attacks.
A few months after this dancing malady had made its appearance at
Aix-la-Chapelle, it broke out at Cologne, where the number of
those possessed amounted to more than five hundred, and about the
same time at Metz, the streets of which place are said to have
been filled with eleven h , ne of the most ruinous disorder. Secret desires
were excited, and but too often found opportunities for wild
enjoyment; and numerous beggars, stimulated by vice and misery,
availed themselves of this new complaint to gain a temporary
livelihood. Girls and b men were seen raving about in
consecrated and unconsecrated places, and the consequences were
soon perceived. Gangs of idle vagabonds, who understood how to
imitate to the life the gestures and convulsions of those really
affected, roved from plaace seeking maintenance and
adventures, and thus, wherever they went, spreading this
disgusting spasmodic the susceptible are infected as easily by the appearance
as by the reality. At last it was found necessary to drive away
these mischievous guests, who were equally inaccessible to the
exorcisms of the priestd the remedies of the physicians. It
was not, however, un vil. In the meantime, when once called
into existence, the plague crept on, anrteenth and
fifteenth centuries, and even, though in a megree,
throughout thth and seventeenth, causing a permanent
disorder of the mind, and exhibiting in those cities to whose
inhabitants it w elty, scenes as strange as they were detestable.
The series of these great events began in the year 1333, fifteen
years before the plague broke out in Europe: they first appeared
in China. H n the tract of cotered by the rivers Kiang and
Hoai. This was followed by such violent torrents of rain, in and
about Kingsai, at that time the capital of the empire, that,
according to tradition, more than 400,000 people perished in the
flooditions, the neighbourhood of Canton was visited
by inundations; whilst in Tche, afterf about 5,000,000 of
people. A few months afterwards an earthquake followed, at and
near Kingsai; here, again, thousands found their grave. In
Houkouang an a drought prevailed for five months; and
innumerable swarms of locusts destroyed the vegetation; while
famine and pestilence, as usual, followed in their train.
Connected accounts of the condition of Europe before this great
catastrophe are not to be expected from the writers of the
fourteenth century. It is remarkable, however, that
simultaneously with a drought and renewed floods in China, in
1336, many uncommon atmospheric phenomena, and in
place. According to the Chinese annuals, about 4,000,000 of
people perished by famine in the neighbourhood of Kiang in 1337;
and deluges, swarms of locusts, and an earthquake which lasted six
day incredible devastation. In the same year, the first
swarms of ar by myriads of these insects. In 1338 Kingsai
was visited by an earthquake of ten days' duration; at the same
time France suffered from a failthe harvest; and
thenceforth, till the year 1342, there was in China a constant
succession of inundearthquakes, and famines. In the same
year great floods occurred in the vic of the Rhine and in
France, which could not be attribrings were seen to burst
forth, and dry d caused a destructive deluge; and in Pien-
tcheon and Leang-tcheou, after three months' rain, there followed
unheard-of inundations, which destroyed seven cities. In Egypt
and Syria, violent earthquakes took place; and in China they
became,and in both the following years in Canton,
with subterraneous thunder.
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