[DEAN MILMAN has remarked that the protection and care afforded by the Church to this blighted race of lepers was among the most beautiful of its offices during the Middle Ages. The leprosy of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was supposed to be a legacy of the crusades, but was in all probability the offspring of meagre and unwholesome diet, miserable lodging and clothing, physical and moral degradation. The services of the Church in the seclusion of these unhappy sufferers were most affecting. The stern duty of looking to the public welfare is tempered with exquisite compassion for the victims of this loathsome disease. The ritual for the sequestration of the leprous differed little from the burial service. After the leper had been sprinkled with holy water, the priest conducted him into the church, the leper singing the psalm Libera me domine,' and the crucifix and bearer going before. In the church a black cloth was stretched over two trestles in front of the altar, and the leper leaning at its side devoutly heard mass. The priest, taking up a little earth in his cloak, threw it on one of the leper's feet, and put him out of the church, if it did not rain too heavily; took him to his hut in the midst of the fields, and then uttered the prohibitions: 'I forbid you entering the church. ... or entering the company of others. I forbid you quitting your home without your leper's dress. He concluded: Take this dress, and wear it in token of humility; take these gloves, take this clapper, as a sign that you are forbidden to speak to any one. You are not to be indignant at being thus separated from others, and as to your little wants, good people will provide for you, and God will not desert you.' Then in this old ritual follow these sad words: When it shall come to pass that the leper shall pass out of this world, he shall be buried in his hut, and not in the churchyard.' At first there was a doubt whether wives should follow their husbands who had been leprous, or remain in the world and marry again. The Church decided that the marriage-tie was indissoluble, and so bestowed on these unhappy beings this immense source of consolation. With a love stronger than this living death, lepers were followed into banishment from the haunts of men by their faithful wives. Readers of Sir J. Stephen's Essays on Ecclesiastical Biography will recollect the description of the founder of the Franciscan order, how, controlling his involuntary disgust, St. Francis of Assisi washed the feet and dressed the sores of the lepers, once at least reverently applying his lips to their wounds. BOUCHER-JAMES.] This ceremony of quasi-burial varied consider. ably at different times and in different places In some cases a grave was dug, and the leper's face was often covered during the service. TO ULYSSES. 1 I. ULYSSES, much-experienced man, ours, Her tribes of men, and trees, and flowers, From Corrientes to Japan, II. To you that bask below the Line, The century's three strong eights have met To drag me down to seventy-nine III. In summer if I reach my day To you, yet young, who breathe the balm Of summer-winters by the palm And orange grove of Paraguay, IV. I tolerant of the colder time, Who love the winter woods, to trace On paler heavens the branching grace Of leafless elm, or naked lime, V. And see my cedar green, and there When frost is keen and days are brief Or marvel how in English air VI. My yucca, which no winter quells, Altho' the months have scarce begun, Has push'd toward our faintest sun A spike of half-accomplish'd bells — VII. Or watch the waving pine which here The warrior of Caprera set,2 1 'Ulysses,' the title of a number of essays W. G. Palgrave. He died at Monte Video bein seeing my poem. 2 Garibaldi said to me, alluding to his bare island, 'I wish I had your trees.' 3 The tale of Nejd. The Philippines. 5 In Dominica. 6 The Shadow of the Lord. Certain obscot markings on a rock in Siam, which express image of Buddha to the Buddhist more or les distinctly according to his faith and his mond worth, 7 The footstep of the Lord on another rock. The monastery of Sumelas. Anatolian Spectre stories. 10 The Three Cities. 11 Travels in Egypt. |