may be put therein without touch or nearing of him. Never to let his flesh be seen, so much even as his mouth or the tip of his finger; never to speak wheresoever he may be; never to stand within ten yards of a clean man, save with the way of the wind; to give help to no man, and to receive none, whether for life or death; to look upon the earth continually and to remember that he is no more than a particle of it; to rejoice in the mercy of God, who made Heaven wide enough even for lepers to enter in; to hear mass through the leper's window, or standing "under the bells;" and to be buried some day in his hut without sacrament or service, for he was already a dead body, here and now committed to the tomb; a dead man in the eye of the law, a dead man in the holding of the Church, without rights over his possessions, his children, or his wife; a thing without name, to be henceforward known of no man, save as a leper. red cross, and beneath it is not yet grown too horrible. The procession moves away, and the sunlight glitters on the white linen and the silver swaying crucifix, till it shines like an upheld point of white fire. The sound of singing travels down the road, long, sweet, exultant; the men's voices meet the treble of the children, in an interminable refrain of triumph and joy: Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. It is all over, and they are going home, to the wholesomeness of labor and sweet air and young life; and on the threshold of his hut the leper, left alone, puts on the cloak and the hood which are to hide his corruption, and is dead. But from far along the road that winds through fields and orchards to the church, comes still the sound of singing: Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven. Leprosy was, it must be remembered, a very terrible and widespread scourge in Brittany, as elsewhere. It was so present a dread among the people, that the plague-stricken were Next the priest, indifferently pitiful, but accustomed, and not unwilling to be done with it, takes the consecrated earth brought from the cemetery, and throws it on the man before him, speak-driven out of the towns as if they ing the usual blessing on the tomb; and then he draws back a little to the spot where the choristers stand beside the crucifix. Grant them, oh Lord, eternal rest, and let light everlasting shine on them. From the threshold of his hut the leper looks once more abroad for the last time. His wife weeps on the near edge of the crowd, and his children cling to her skirts; over her loosened coiffe she wears the black square of widowhood. They do not come near him; they will never come near him again. There has been no kind parting for him, as for other dead men; from the moment the scourge was found upon him, he had been outcast, aloof. They are alive, and he is utterly dead; his wife may choose a new husband, and he, he may walk in the wind of her wedding, and pick up the alms thrown to him. Or he may take, if he will, one to replace her, that like himself wears the hood with the terrible were criminals, and the clean rose up in frantic repulsion against the unclean. Lest their dead bodies should lie in the streets and pollute the air, they were given, perforce, a trembling and unwilling charity; they were permitted to shelter themselves in the woods, and portions of bread and meat were laid on stones beside the way, where the leper, or the wolf, might seek them at night. If the leper died,-well, then, no one was to blame; it was no man's fault if the wolves grew over-bold, or the disease were strong and quick. Sometimes, as all the world knew, it was very quick in doing its terrible work; at other times it lingered, and that was worse. He was dead and there was an end; to all who loved him he had been as a dead man already for so long. And the next leper that succeeded to his hut of twisted branches might clear it of his bones. But reason and a growing selfdefence presently compelled a greater charity. In the first place there were soon too many lepers. When a town found its woods haunted with infection, when a troop of hideous beings hung half-starved and ravenous about its gates, or fought for the bread and meat thrown out to them as to a pack of dogs, it was time to deal with this terror that lay constantly about it, and as constantly broke out in its midst. There were even those, fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, who at deadly risk kept their sick secretly hidden within their houses, a continual infection, rather than let them be cast out to join the hideous band that herded in the woods; it was time, and more than time, to meet the danger and provide against it according to the available means. So leprosy presently lost its worst horrors, and was treated, within the manners of the day, to a systematized but more consistent charity. It remained absolutely necessary that the leper should be cast out from among clean men, whether to herd with his like or to live alone; but at least his wants were reasonably provided for. He was fed sufficiently, lodged within four walls, allowed a table, a chair, and a pallet, clothes to wear and the possibility of hearing mass; and he was treated with no brutality. On the other hand he was condemned to an extremer isolation than had yet prevailed, a living death that made of him no more than a hideous black shape to be avoided by all men. He was shut into silence; he was forbidden even to look upon the world about him; and the very splendor of the funeral mass that the Church gave to a leper, declared the absolute death into which he had passed. But that he was set apart in a never-ending darkness and isolation, or forced to herd only with others of his kind, was no more than the inevitable consequence of the everpresent plague that was an equal danger to all men. or religious foundations. These were In time, however, things changed, as things inevitably must change in the passing of years. The hospices and the clusters of isolated huts became settlements and even villages, where the lepers lived isolated still, but in communities, marrying among themselves and giving birth to children. Perhaps the disease had become already less frequent and less deadly; or perhaps the stern system of isolation had confined the taint to the leprous families, and even there in time it grew weaker. At any rate the leper, if still set apart and outside the lives of others, had inherited a life of his own; his settleThe villages provided huts for their ments bore a common name, and sick in a remote corner of the parish, gradually practised a common induswhich grew presently into small settle- try. They were known as Ladreries, or ments. Near the large towns hospices more commonly Madeleines, from were built by the charity of princes Saint Madeleine and her brother Saint was Those who live in the Madeleine, is a proverb still quoted; and what once entirely true is not yet wholly false. Such an one, especially if he be a ropemaker, actually does not win a wife at the first asking. "There are girls good enough for you in the Madeleine," or "I'll never marry into the Madeleine," are ready responses; and though now such scruples are to be overcome, they are yet a strange and significant survival of the centu Lazarus or Ladre, who, according to And there is one other inheritance which has come down through the years, bearing pitiful witness to the ancient scourge; an inheritance of illhealth that has grown into a saying, so that when a child is born sickly or feeble, it is called un vrai enfant de la Madeleine. It is only, now, a saying, and, like most sayings, has almost outlived its truth; but it is a very sad and unmistakable testimony to the tainted blood, inherited from the days when leprosy was a constant horror, a death in life, for which a man was set apart from his fellow-men, and stripped of all that he possessed save only his corrupt and suffering body. It was surely a very terrible thing to be a leper in Brittany, in the days when he walked in his own funeral and heard mass said for his own soul; when he was shut out into a never-ending silence and isolation, a black, shapeless terror, heralded by a tolling bell; a nameless unknown thing within sight and sound of all that he had loved, so that he might hear the voice of his wife among those that forgot him in laughter, or the feet of his children amid the feet that fled from the path of the walking death. The Effect of Color on Dew.-It is said that dew is a great respecter of colors. To prove this take pieces of glass or board and paint them red, yellow, green, and black. Expose them at night, and you will find that the yellow will be covered with moisture, and the green will be damp, but that the red and the black will be left perfectly dry. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY THE LIVING AGE COMPANY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. 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