enthusiasts; by the denunciations of preachers, and by the portents and
prodigies reported to have occurred. During the long and frosty winter
preceding this fatal year, a comet appeared in the heavens, the sickly
colour of which was supposed to forebode the judgment about to follow.
Blazing stars and other meteors, of a lurid hue and strange and
preternatural shape, were likewise seen. The sun was said to have set in
streams of blood, and the moon to have shown without reflecting a
shadow; grisly shapes appeared at night--strange clamours and groans
were heard in the air--hearses, coffins, and heaps of unburied dead were
discovered in the sky, and great cakes and clots of blood were found in
the Tower moat; while a marvellous double tide occurred at London
Bridge. All these prodigies were currently reported, and in most cases
believed.

The severe frost, before noticed, did not break up till the end of
February, and with the thaw the plague frightfully increased in
violence. From Drury-lane it spread along Holborn, eastward as far as
Great Turnstile, and westward to Saint Giles's Pound, and so along the
Tyburn-road. Saint Andrew's, Holborn, was next infected; and as this was
a much more populous parish than the former, the deaths were more
numerous within it. For a while, the disease was checked by Fleet Ditch;
it then leaped this narrow boundary, and ascending the opposite hill,
carried fearful devastation into Saint James's, Clerkenwell. At the same
time, it attacked Saint Bride's; thinned the ranks of the thievish horde
haunting Whitefriars, and proceeding in a westerly course, decimated
Saint Clement Danes.

Hitherto, the city had escaped. The destroyer had not passed Ludgate or
Newgate, but environed the walls like a besieging enemy. A few days,
however, before the opening of this history, fine weather having