participators in the emotion which in those stirring times thrilled the
nation.

It was before the Crimean War, however, that we in Newcastle passed
through an experience the like of which I shall hardly encounter again.
Newcastle was then notorious for its bad sanitation. A great part of the
town consisted of houses of extreme antiquity, crowded together in narrow
alleys in the neighbourhood of the river. These alleys, I may note in
passing, were known as "chares"--a designation which used habitually to
puzzle the Judges of Assize when they had to inquire into the
circumstances of one of the not infrequent riots which in those days
chequered the harmony of life on the banks of the Tyne. It was towards
the end of July, 1853, that the rumour spread, reaching even a schoolboy
like myself, that the cholera was approaching. A few weeks later it was
with us in all its grim reality. Its actual appearance in the town was
preceded by an extraordinary phenomenon which may, or may not, have been
connected with the epidemic. One hot morning in August, when I left home
for school, I was struck by the curious appearance of the atmosphere. No
sooner had I stepped out of doors than I found that the strange dimness
which pervaded everything was due to swarms of minute flies, which
literally darkened the skies and settled in innumerable hosts upon every
object animate and inanimate. It was impossible to breathe without
inhaling these loathsome insects whenever the mouth was opened, and in
order to protect ourselves my brother and I fastened our pocket
handkerchiefs over our faces and walked to school in this fashion. We
found that most other persons had adopted the same device. The plague
lasted in Egyptian intensity for the whole of that day. The next day it
had to a certain extent subsided, and on the third the dead flies might
have been seen literally in heaps, each one of which must have contained
countless thousands, in the corners of halls and passages. Everybody