contemporaries, with one voice, contradict him. The consequences
of failure in the crops were soon felt, especially in Italy and
the surrounding countries, where, in this year, a rain, which
continued for four months, had destroyed the seed. In the larger
cities they were compelled, in the spring of 1347, to have
recourse to a distribution of bread among the poor, particularly
at Florence, where they erected large bakehouses, from which, in
April, ninety-four thousand loaves of bread, each of twelve ounces
in weight, were daily dispensed. It is plain, however, that
humanity could only partially mitigate the general distress, not
altogether obviate it.

Diseases, the invariable consequence of famine, broke out in the
country as well as in cities; children died of hunger in their
mother's arms--want, misery, and despair were general throughout
Christendom.

Such are the events which took place before the eruption of the
Black Plague in Europe. Contemporaries have explained them after
their own manner, and have thus, like their posterity, under
similar circumstances, given a proof that mortals possess neither
senses nor intellectual powers sufficiently acute to comprehend
the phenomena produced by the earth's organism, much less
scientifically to understand their effects. Superstition,
selfishness in a thousand forms, the presumption of the schools,
laid hold of unconnected facts. They vainly thought to comprehend
the whole in the individual, and perceived not the universal
spirit which, in intimate union with the mighty powers of nature,
animates the movements of all existence, and permits not any
phenomenon to originate from isolated causes. To attempt, five