pleased to send us, and six more of Mr. Fontanteu, though just upon the decay of the bills of 1000 livres, they are not very current, yet I hope I shall succeed. You, my lord, have prevented these difficulties, and we are doubly obliged to you for it. Might I presume to beg the favour of you to thank, in my name, cardinal de Rohan, M. and Madame Dangeau, and the curate of St. Sulpice, for their charities.

"It is but just that I give you some account of a desolate town you was pleased to succour. Never was desolation greater, nor ever was any like this. There have been many cruel plagues, but none was ever more cruel : to be sick and dead was almost the same thing. As soon as the distemper gets into a house, it never leaves it till it has swept all the inhabitants one after another. The fright and consternation are so extremely great, that the sick are abandoned by their own relations, and cast out of their houses into the streets, upon quilts or straw beds, amongst the dead bodies, which lie there for want of people to inter them. What a melancholy spectacle have we here on all sides! We go into the streets full of dead bodies half rotten, through which we pass to come to a dying body, to excite him to an act of contrition, and give him absolution. For above fourteen days together, the blessed sacrament was carried every where to all the sick, and the extreme unction was given them with a zeal of which we have few examples. But the churches being infected with the stench of the dead bodies flung at the doors, we were obliged to leave off, and be content with confessing the poor people. At present I have no more confessors; the pretended corruptors of the morality of Jesus Christ (the Jesuits), without any obligation, have sacrificed themselves, and given their lives for their brethren; whilst the gentlemen of the severe morality (the Jansenists) are all flown, and have secured themselves, notwithstanding the obligations their benefices imposed on them; and nothing can recal them, nor ferret them out of their houses. The two communities of the Jesuits are quite disabled, to the reserve of one old man of seventy-four years, who still goes about night and day, and visits the hospitals. One more is just come from Lyons, purposely to hear the confessions of the infected, whose zeal does not savour much of the pretended laxity. I have had twenty-four capuchins dead, and fourteen sick, but I am in expectation of more. Seven

1

recollecs, as many cordeliers, five or six carms, and several minims, are dead, and all the best of the clergy, both secular and regular; which grievously afflicts me.

"I stand in need of prayers, to enable me to support all the crosses that almost oppress me. At last the plague. got into my palace, and within seven days I lost my steward, who accompanied me in the streets, two servants, two chairmen, and my confessor: my secretary and another lie sick, so that they have obliged me to quit my palace, and retire to the first president, who was so kind as to lend me his house. We are destitute of all succour; we have no meat; and whatsoever I could do, going all about the town, I could not meet with any that would undertake to distribute broth to the poor that were in want. The doctors of Montpelier, who came hither three or four days ago, are frightened at the horrid stench of the streets, and refuse to visit the sick till the dead bodies are removed, and the streets cleansed. They had been much more surprised had they come a fortnight sooner; then nothing but frightful dead bodies were seen on all sides, and there was no stirring without vinegar at our noses, though that could not hinder our perceiving the filthy stench of them. I had 200 dead bodies that lay rotting under my windows for the space of eight days, and but for the authority of the first president they had remained there much longer. At present things are much changed; I made my round about the town, and found but few; but a prodigious number of quilts and blankets, and of all sorts of the richest clothes, which people would touch no more, and are going to burn.

"There are actually in the streets to the value of above 200,000 livres. The disorder and confusion have hitherto been extremely great; but all our hopes are in the great care of the chevalier de Langeron, governor of the town. He has already caused some shops to be opened. The change of the governor, and of the season, by the grace of God, will be advantageous. Had we not affected to deceive the public, by assuring that the evil which reigned was not the plague; and had we buried the dead bodies which lay a whole fortnight in the streets, I believe the mortality had ceased, and we should have nothing to do but provide against the extreme misery which necessarily must be the sequel of this calamity.

"You cannot imagine the horror which we have seen, nor can any believe it that has not seen it; my little cou

rage has often almost failed me. May it please Almighty God to let us soon see an end of it. There is a great diminution of the mortality; and those who hold that the moon contributes to all this, are of opinion, that we owe this diminution to the decline of the moon, and that we shall have reason to fear when it comes to the full. For my part, I am convinced, we owe all to the mercies of God, from whom alone we must hope for relief in the deplorable condition we have been in so long a while.

"I am, &c.

"HENRY, bishop of Marseilles."

When the plague had ceased, M. de Lauzun asked an abbey in commendam for the humane and benevolent prelate who had attended his flock with such assiduity during the time of that dreadful visitation. The regent, to whom the request was made, had forgotten M. de Lauzun's request, and appeared much embarrassed at having neglected to prefer a man of such transcendant virtue as M. de Belsunce was. When M. de Lauzun iterated his request to him, the latter, looking archly at him, said merely, "Monseigneur, il sera mieux un autre fois." The regent, however, soon afterwards gave him a benefice to hold with the bishopric of Marseilles, which he could never be prevailed upon to quit for a more lucrative one. Father Vanier, in his poem of the "Prædium Rusticum," and Pope, in his Essay on Man, Ep. iv. v. 107, 108, have paid that tribute to his memory, to which he is entitled, as the friend and benefactor of mankind.1

BEMBO (PIETRO), in Lat. PETRUS BEMBUS, one of the restorers of polite literature in Italy, was born at Venice in 1470, of an ancient and honourable family. His father, Bernardo, who died in 1518, was an accomplished scholar, and distinguished statesman, who maintained a friendly intercourse with many illustrious and learned persons of the age, and is honourably spoken of by various writers. On one of his embassies to Florence he carried his son, then in his eighth year, to improve him in the Italian language, which was supposed to be spoken and written in that city with the greatest purity. After two years, he returned home with his father, and was placed under the tuition of Joannes Alexander Urticius, and continued to apply to his '

1 From our last edition. See references to Bertrand's "Relation, &c."— Moreri.Diet. Hist.

studies with great assiduity, acquiring in particular a critical knowledge of the Latin tongue. Being solicitous of acquiring a knowledge also of the Greek, the study of which was at that time confined to very few, he resolved to undertake a voyage to Messina, and avail himself of the instructions of the celebrated Constantine Lascaris. Ac cordingly he set out in 1492, accompanied by Agnolo Gabrielli, a young Venetian of distinction, his friend and fellow-student, and profited greatly by the instructions of Lascaris. During this residence in Sicily, which lasted more than two years, he composed a work in Latin, entitled "P. Bembi de Ætna ad Angelum Chabrielem liber," which was published the same year in which he returned, 1495, 4to, and is said to have been the first publication from the Aldine press "in literis rotundis." His compositions both in Latin and Italian soon began to extend his reputation, not only through the different states of Italy, but also to distant countries. His father, flattered with the approbation bestowed on his son, was desirous of employing his talents in the service of his country in some public station, and for some time Bembo occasionally pleaded as an advocate with success and applause, until being disappointed in obtaining a place which was given to a rival much inferior in merit, he discovered that reluctance for public life, which, in obedience to his father, he had but imperfectly concealed, and determined to devote his whole attention to literature, as connected with the profession of the church. About this time, it is said, that his resolution was confirmed by accidentally going into a church when the officiating priest was reading a portion of the evangelical history, and had just come to the words, "Peter, follow me," which Bembo looked upon as a divine admonition. There is nothing in his character, however, that can give much credibility to this story, which, it ought to be mentioned, some say occurred long after, when he was hesitating whether he should accept the office of cardinal.

After the lapse of a few years, which he spent partly at Venice and partly at Padua in the prosecution of his studies, his father being appointed vicedomino of Ferrara, young Bembo accompanied him thither, where he had an opportunity of attending the philosophical lectures of Nicolao Leoniceno, and commenced an acquaintance with Sadoleto, and other learned men. He was also favourably received at court, but did not desist from the prosecution of his

studies. When about twenty-eight years of age, he began his "Asolani," so called from its having been finished at Asolo, a town in the Venetian territory. This work, in which the subject of love is attempted in a moral and philosophical point of view, soon became so popular as to contribute much to his fame. It was first printed at the Aldine press in 1505, 4to, and was often reprinted. He afterwards returned with his father to Venice, where, and at Padua, he continued his studies principally with a view of improving his native language. At length, unwilling to continue burthensome to his father, he determined to try his fortune at the court of Urbino, at that time the centre of genius, fashion, and taste, and where Castiglioni laid the scene of his "Il Cortegiano," and introduced Bembo as one of the speakers. Bembo was recommended here in 1506, and soon became admired for his address, eloquence, and manners, while he still prosecuted his favourite studies, and produced his "Rime," and various Latin compositions. He also occasionally visited the court of Rome, where the duchess of Urbino Elizabetha Gonzaga zealous

ly endeavoured to promote his interest. In the last year of the pontificate of Julius II. he accompanied Sadoleto and other persons of distinction to that city; and among other literary services rendered by him to the pope, he decyphered an ancient manuscript written in abbreviated characters, a task which others had in vain attempted, and which the pope appears to have rewarded by some ecclesiastical preferments of the sinecure kind.

In 1513, when Leo X. became pope, he appointed Bembo one of his secretaries, who, now in his forty-third year, settled at Rome in this character, and had his friend Sadoleto for his colleague. By them the pope's correspondence was carried on in pure and classical Latin, a thing which Casa says was neither practised before nor thought practicable, former secretaries having compounded their Latin of all manner of languages and provincialisms. Bembo in other respects rendered himself so acceptable to Leo, that he employed him in commissions of the highest trust, which he rewarded with liberality. But the court of this pope was at the same time the seat of voluptuousness, and what Bembo gained in courtly promotion and literary fame, he lost in morals and moral character. All the excuse Casa can make is that he was not yet in holy orders. He here formed an illicit connexion with a girl