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 vicissitudes of existence, the world belonged
to the living.



CHAPTER V--MORAL EFFECTS