h indifference the great phenomena of
nature, which modify, not only the surface of the earth, but also the
human mind. Hence, most of them have touched but superficially on the
"Great Mortality" of the fourteenth century. We, for our parts, are
convinced that in the history of the world the Black Death is one of the
most important events which have prepared the way for the present state
of Europe.

He who studies the human mind with attention, and forms a deliberate
judgment on the intellectual powers which set people and States in
motion, may perhaps find some proofs of this assertion in the following
observations:--at that time, the advancement of the hierarchy was, in
most countries, extraordinary; for the Church acquired treasures and
large properties in land, even to a greater extent than after the
Crusades; but experience has demonstrated that such a state of things is
ruinous to the people, and causes them to retrograde, as was evinced on
this occasion.

After the cessation of the Black Plague, a greater fecundity in women was
everywhere remarkable--a grand phenomenon, which, from its occurrence
after every destructive pestilence, proves to conviction, if any
occurrence can do so, the prevalence of a higher power in the direction
of general organic life. Marriages were, almost without exception,
prolific; and double and triple births were more frequent than at other
times; under which head, we should remember the strange remark, that
after the "Great Mortality" the children were said to have got fewer
teeth than before; at which contemporaries were mightily shocked, and
even later writers have felt surprise.

If we examine the grounds of this oft-repeated assertion, we shall find
that they were astonished to see children, cut twenty, or at most, twenty-
two teeth, under the supposition that a greater number had formerly
fallen to their share. Some writers of authority, as, for example, the
physician Savonarola, at Ferrara, who probably looked for twenty-eight
teeth in children, published their opinions on this subject. Others
copied from them, without seeing for themselves, as often happens in
other matters which are equally evident; and thus the world believed in
the miracle of an imperfection in the human body which had been caused by
the Black Plague.

The people gradually consoled themselves after the sufferings which they
had undergone; the dead were lamented and forgotten; and, in the stirring
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