ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IMPEOVING- 

 NATUEAL KNOWLEDGE. 



This time two hundred years ago — in the beginning of 

 January, 1666 — those of our forefathers who inhabited 

 this great and ancient city, took breath between the 

 shocks of two fearful calamities : one not quite past, 

 although its fury had abated ; the other to come. 



"Within a few yards of the very spot on which we 

 ;re assembled, so the tradition runs, that painful 

 aWl deadly malady, the plague, appeared in the latter 

 months of 1664 ; and, though no new visitor, smote the 

 people of England, and especially of her capital, with 

 a violence unknown before, in the course of the following 

 yeair. The hand of a master has pictured what happened 

 in those dismal months ; and in that truest of fictions, 

 " The History of the Plague Year," Defoe shows death, 

 with every accompaniment of pain and terror, stalking 

 through the narrow streets of old London, and changing 

 their busy hum into a silence broken only by the 

 wailing of the mourners of fifty thousand dead ; by the 

 woful denunciations and mad prayers of fanatics ; and 

 by the madder yells of despairing profligates. 



But, about this time in 1666, the death-rate had 

 sunk to nearly its ordinary amount; a case of plague 

 occurred only here and there, and the richer citizens 



