12. Paris hath not been for these last fifty years so much infested
with the plague as London; now that at London the plague (which
between the years 1591 and 1666 made five returns, viz., every
fifteen years, at a medium, and at each time carried away one-fifth
of the people) hath not been known for the 21 years last past, and
there is a visible way by God's ordinary blessing to lessen the same
by two-thirds when it next appeareth.

13. As to the ground upon which Paris stands in respect of London,
we say, that if there be five stories or floors of housing at Paris,
for four at London, or in that proportion, then the 82,000 families
of Paris stand upon the equivalent of 65,000 London housteds, and if
there be 115,000 families at London, and but 82,000 at Paris, then
the proportion of the London ground to that of Paris is as 115 to
sixty-five, or as twenty-three to thirteen.

14. Moreover Paris is said to be an oval of three English miles
long and two and a half broad, the area whereof contains but five
and a half square miles; but London is seven miles long, and one and
a quarter broad at a medium, which makes an area of near nine square
miles, which proportion of five and half to nine differs little from
that of thirteen to twenty-three.

15. Memorandum, that in Nero's time, as Monsieur Chivreau
reporteth, there died 300,000 people of the plague in old Rome; now
if there died three of ten then and there, being a hotter country,
as there dies two of ten at London, the number of people at that
time, was but a million, whereas at London they are now about
700,000. Moreover the ground within the walls of old Rome was a