im. It is this feeling
which makes the crazed one grand, heroic, and which constitutes this
picture an historical work of a high class. It is far more than a
collection of incidents in a plague; it is the making the plague itself
but an accessory. The theme is of the madness that spreads its
bewilderment on all around, as its own of right, as cause and effect--a
bewilderment that works beyond the frame, and will not let the beholder
question its fanatic power. We will endeavour to describe the picture,
but first, take the subject from the catalogue:--"Solomon Eagle
exhorting the People to Repentance, during the Plague of the Year 1665.
P. F. Poole.--'I suppose the world has heard of the famous Solomon
Eagle, an enthusiast; he, though not infected at all, but in his head,
went about denouncing of judgment upon the city in a frightful manner,
sometimes quite naked and with a pan of burning charcoal on his
head.'--See DE FOE'S _Narrative of the Plague in London_." The scene is
supposed to be in that part of London termed "Alsatia," so well
described by Sir Walter Scott--the refuge of the destitute and criminal.
Here are groups of the infected, the dying, the callous, the
despairing--a miserable languor pervades them all. The young--the
aged--the innocent--the profligate. One sedate and lovely female is
seeking consolation from the sacred book, beside whom sits her father--a
grand figure, in whose countenance is a fixed intensity of worldly care,
that alone seems to keep life within his listless body, next him is a
young mother, with her dying child, and close behind him a maiden,
hiding her face, whose eye alone is seen, distended and in vacant gaze.
We feel that this is a family group, perhaps the broken remnant of a
family, awaiting utter desolation. Behind the group are two very
striking figures--a man bewildered, and more than infected, escaping
from the house, within the doorway of which we see, written in red
characters, "Lord have mercy upon us," and the cross; the nurse is
endeavouring to detain him. Nothing can be finer than the action and
expression in both figures--the horror of the nurse, and fever energy of
the escaped, in whose countenance, never to be forgotten, is the
personification of plague-madness. It is recorded that such a one did so
escape, swam across the Thames, and recovered. Beyond these are
revellers, a dissolute band, card-playing. In the midst of the game one
is smitten with the plague, and is