| 
| Sf Spain, evinced his courage by repeated 
| » actions ofeclat. Chagrined, howevér, with 
neglect of promotion, he resigned his com- 
mission, and retired into the convent of 
Carthusians, at Besangon. As his restless 
| spirit could ill brook the gloom and silence 
| ‘of a cloister, he appointed a confidential 
friend to wait for him, with a horse, with- 
ut the garden wall, and secretly procured 
of his relations some money, a riding-dress, 
a case of pistols, and a sword. Thus equip- 
ped, he stole, during the night, from his 
eell, into the garden, stabbed the prior, 
swhom he met on his way, scrambled over 
‘the wall, and rode off at full speed. When 
. his horse could advance no further, from 
| fatigue and hunger, he alighted at an obscure 
{ ann, ordered all the meat in the house to be 
t ready, and sat down to dinner with 
‘the utmest composure. A traveller, who 
| © arrived:a few minutes later, politely tequest- 
ed that he might be allowed to share with 
him. - Vatteville rudely refused, allegin 
that there was little enough for himself, 
‘and, impatient of contradiction, killed the 
- gentleman on the spot with one pistol, and 
‘presenting the other to the landlady and 
Avaiter, swore he would blow out their brains 
af-they once dared to interrupt his repast. 
- Having thus escaped with impunity, he 
encountered various fortunes, landed, at 
length, in Turkey, assumed the turban, re- 
_ eeived a commission in the army, was rais- 
ed to the rank of bashaw, and nominated to 
the government of certain districts of the 
~ Morea. But longing to revisit his native 
country, he entered into a secret corres pon- 
dence with the Venetians, then at war 
ee the Turks, obtained absolution, along 
ith a considerable church living in Franche 
omté, delivered the towns‘and forts under ° 
‘his command into the hands of the enemy ; 
and was actually presented by Lewis XIV. 
‘to the vacant sée of Besancon. The Pope, 
‘however, who had granted absolution, re- 
‘fused the bull,—and Vatteville was obliged 
_ to content himself with the frst deanery, 
___ ‘and two rich abbeys. In the midst of his 
__-Mmagnificence he sometimes deigned to call 
: ron his old friends, the Carthusians, and, at 
‘hast, expired quietly in his bed, at the ad- 
_wanced age of ninety !—A roiurier, guilty of 
tone half of his enormities, would have been 
‘broken upon the wheel.” 
The story from Joinville, which fol- 
lows, is most unmercifully lugged in by 
_ the head and shoulders ; and it is re- 
‘Tated as vilely ag it is introduced. 
_ In his notes madé at Lausanne, Mr. 
_ Muirhead remarks a curious passage 
from the chronicle of Marius, or 5. 
Maire, who died A. D. 601.. In re- 
«ording the effects of a prevailing small. 
‘ sae (variola), he notices that it proved 
tal: to cows. Eighteen months ago 
_ this circumstance ‘had been communi 
sated to Dr. Beddoes, through us, by 
MUIRHEAD’S TRAVELS IN THE LOW CouNTRIES, &c. 
61 
Mr. Coleridge. We will copy his let- 
ter, as it states the circumstance more 
fully, and adds to it another fact equal- 
ly important. 
Marius, a Burgundian noble and ec. 
clesiastic, who died in the year 601, 
possessed a fertile estate about five miles 
above the old Aventicum; this estate 
hé cultivated with his own hands, and 
employed himself in winter in making 
utensils for the church service. On this 
estate he built a church and a large 
manor-house, and this was the first be- 
ginning of the town of Peterlingen. 
So Muller, the Swiss Tacitus, informs 
me, from whom I have extracted this 
account, for the sake of that which is 
to follow. This same Marius wrote a 
chronicle, partly of what had been re- 
lated to him by old people, and partly 
of the great events of his own times. 
This chronicle is to be found in Du 
Chesne; and under the year 570, is the 
following curious passage, which I con- 
fess gave me no little pleasure, as add- 
ing strength to the most rational hypo- 
thesis, concerning the nature and ori- 
gin of the cow-pock. Hoc anno, morbus 
validus cum profluvio ventris et variold. 
Italiam Galliamque valde afflixit, et animalia 
bubula per loca superscripla, maxima in- 
terterunt. (This year a strong disease, 
with flux and variolous eruption, griev- 
ously afflicted Italy and Gaul; and the 
horned’ cattle’ throughout the above- 
mentioned places, chiefly died of it.) 
If then, at the time of the first ap- 
pearance of the small-pox, the disease 
affected horned cattle even more than 
the human species, is it not a fair infer- 
ence that cows must still be naturally 
susceptible of the contagion, and conse- 
quently does not the fact strengthen 
the probability that the cow-pox is the 
small-pox in its mildest state, and re- 
ceived by the cows from inoculated 
milkers? The account given by Haller 
of the first appearance of the small-pox, 
accords in date with this of Marius: 
he says, it was brought by the Abyssi- 
nians into Arabia, at the time of their 
conquest of the province of Hamyer, 
-earried thence by Greek merchants to 
Constantinople, and from Constantino- 
ple to the north of Italy, by the army 
of Belisarius. 
** I remember another fact in con- 
firmation of the hypothesis, which if I 
mistake not, for I speak entirely from 
memory, was in a pamphlet by a Doctor 
Layard, who, in the great disease among 
horned cattle in 1756, (1 will not an- 
