In the one case, the victim was cut down by a sudden stroke, which occasioned a shock or moral paralysis both to himself and the survivors--especially to the latter--that might, be almost said to neutralize its own inflictions.

In the other, the approach was comparatively so slow and gradual, that all the sympathies and afflictions were allowed full and painful time to reach the utmost limits of human suffering, and to endure the wasting series of those struggles and details which long illness, surrounded by destitution and affliction, never fails to inflict.

In the cholera, there was no time left to feel--the passions were wrenched and stunned by a blow, which was over, one may say, before it could be perceived; while in the wide-spread but more tedious desolation of typhus, the heart was left to brood over the thousand phases of love and misery which the terrible realities of the one, joined to the alarming exaggerations of the other, never failed to present.

In cholera, a few hours, and all was over; but in the awful fever which then prevailed, there was the gradual approach--the protracted illness--the long nights of racking pain--day after day of raging torture--and the dark period of uncertainty when the balance of human life hangs in the terrible equilibrium of suspense--all requiring the exhibition of constant attention--of the eye whose affection never sleeps--the ear that is deaf only to every sound but the moan of pain--the touch whose tenderness is felt as a solace, so long as suffering itself is conscious--the pressure of the aching head--the moistening of the parched and burning lips--and the numerous and indescribable offices of love and devotedness, which always encompass, or should encompass, the bed of sickness and of death.

There was, we say, all this, and much more than the imagination itself, unaided by a severe acquaintance with the truth, could embody in its gloomiest conceptions.
In fact, Ireland during the season, or rather the year, we are describing, might be compared to one vast lazar-house filled with famine, disease and death.