Some even would dance with a cup of water
in their hands, or plunge their heads after
dancing in a tub of water, set for them, and
trimmed with rushes. In the beginning of
the seventeenth century, the cure of the
tarantati was attempted on a grand scale.
Bands of musicians went among the villages,
playing tarantellas; and the women were
so especially interested in this way of bringing
relief to the afflicted, that the period of
tarantella-playing was called "the women's
little carnival." The good creatures saved
up their spare money to pay for the dances,
and deserted their household duties to assist
at them. One rich lady, Mita Lupa, spent
her whole fortune on these works of charity.

A direction was often given by this little
carnival to the thoughts of hysterical women.
They sickened as it approached, danced,
and were for a season whole; but the tarantati
included quite as many men as women.
Even the sceptic could not shake off the
influence of general credulity. Gianbatista
Quinzalo, Bishop of Foligno, suffered himself,
in bravado, to be bitten by a tarantula; but
to the shame of his episcopal gravity, he
could obtain a cure only by dancing.

When bodies are ill-housed or ill-nourished,
or by late sickness or other cause
depressed as most men's bodies were in the
middle ages, minds are apt to receive morbid
impressions. The examples just given show
how rapidly across such tinder the fire of a
lunatic fancy spreads. People abounded who
were even glad to persuade themselves that
they were changed into wolves every night,
that they were witches, or that they were
possessed by demons.

About fifty years ago, a young woman of
strong frame visited a friend in one of the
Berlin hospitals. On entering a ward she
fell down in strong convulsion. Six female
patients who saw her became at once
convulsed in the same way; and, by degrees, eight
others passed into the same condition for four
months; during which time two of the nurses
followed their example. They were all between
sixteen and twenty-five years old.

In a Methodist chapel at Redruth a man
cried suddenly, " What shall I do to be
saved?" and made contortions expressive
of severe distress. Other members of the
congregation very shortly afterwards uttered
the same words, and seemed to suffer
excruciating pain. The occurrence having
excited curiosity, the new complaint
spread through all the adjacent towns
of Camborne, Penzance, Truro, Helstone,
Falmouth, and the intervening villages. It
was an epidemic confined to Methodist
chapels, and people of the lowest class; it
consisted always in the utterance of the same
words, followed by convulsions. Within
no very long time, four thousand people had
become affected by the malady. A somewhat
similar disorder has prevailed for a long time
in the Shetland Islands.

Other madnesses of this kind, will occur
to the minds of many readers. There
is not necessarily deceit or hypocrisy in
such outbreaks: they are contemporary
illustrations, each on a small scale, of a kind
of mental disorder which was one of the most
universal of the sorrows of the middle ages,
Men were liable in masses to delusions so
absurd, and so sincere, that it is impossible
to exclude from a fair study of the social life
of our forefathers a constant reference to such
unsound conditions of their minds.

AN EXCURSION TRAIN, BEFORE STEAM.

ADVERTISEMENTS of steamboat trips and
railway excursions crowd whole columns of
our newspapers, stare upon us from many-
coloured placards from every wall, and it is
pleas.ant to look back upon the quiet, cosy
doings of our great grandfathers; with whom
a journey of twenty miles into the country was
an event to be talked about for the rest of
the year. A family tour of some three
hundred miles in our own land was a more
serious undertaking than a tour through
France and Italy would be in the present day.
No wonder that the worthy gentleman, who,
with his brother and sister-in-law, cousin Sam,
and three friends, determined thus to ruralise,
a hundred and six years ago, should keep a
diary of each passing event, and write the
whole, on his return, fairly out with a crow-
quill pen in the little book discoloured with
age which is now before us.

What has speed to do with holiday-
making. A landau and four with an equestrian
escort could travel quite fast enough
for pleasure. Wherefore make haste to
the end of the journey, when the journey
itself was the chief pleasure? Thus thought
the excursionists, whose proceedings we are
about to describe. There was no planning
over-night, and setting out the next morning
in the sober days of George the Second.
Even the traveller by the Wonder or the
Dispatch took his place, and paid for it, a
week beforehand. Much more was deliberation
necessary when there was a stout landau
to be provided, and a careful driver, and
horses warranted to carry well for the three
equestrians. And, what a stock of London
comforts had to be provided for the
solace of travellers bound almost to the foot
of the Welch mountains! There was
arquebusade, and Hungary water, and cardamom
comfits for the ladies; a bottle of genuine
Cognac, and cordial waters, for the gentlemen,
and a stock of rappee snuff for both.
The gunpowder tea, and the loaf of double-
refined sugar—most acceptable presents to
country cousins—and the road-book to point
out all the places worth seeing, and the
pocket perspective-glass to see them with.
Adroit packing had to be employed to get the
stout lutestring and brocade mantoas, buck-
rammed and whaleboned as they were,