over the city, and that so very near the houses that it was plain they
imported something peculiar to the city alone; that the comet before the
pestilence was of a faint, dull, languid color, and its motion very heavy,
solemn, and slow; but that the comet before the fire was bright and
sparkling, or, as others said, flaming, and its motion swift and furious;
and that, accordingly, one foretold a heavy judgment, slow, but severe,
terrible, and frightful, as the plague was; but the other foretold
a stroke, sudden, swift, and fiery, like the conflagration. Nay, so
particular some people were that, as they looked upon that comet preceding
the fire, they fancied that they not only saw it pass swiftly and fiercely,
and could perceive the motion with the eye, but they even heard it; that it
made a rushing, mighty noise, fierce and terrible, though at a distance and
but just perceivable.

I saw both these stars, and I must confess, had so much of the common
notion of such things in my head that I was apt to look upon them as the
forerunners and warnings of God's judgments; and especially, when after the
plague had followed the first, I yet saw another of the like kind, I could
not but say, God had not yet sufficiently scourged the city.

But I could not at the same time carry these things to the height that
others did, knowing, too, that natural causes are assigned by the
astronomers for such things; and that their motions, and even their
evolutions, are calculated, or pretended to be calculated; so that they
cannot be so perfectly called the forerunners or foretellers, much less the
procurers of such events as pestilence, war, fire, and the like.

But let my thoughts, and the thoughts of the philosophers, be or have been
what they will, these things had a more than ordinary influence upon the
minds of the common people, and they had, almost universally, melancholy