ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IMPROVING 

 NATURAL 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. 5 



Within a few yards of the very spot on which we are as- 

 sembled, so the tradition runs, that painful and deadly mal- 

 ady, the plague, appeared in the latter months of 1664; and, 

 though no new visitor, smote the people of England, and espe- 

 cially of her capital, with a violence unknown before, in the 10 

 course of the following year. The hand of a master has pic- 

 tured 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 chang- 15 

 ing their busy hum into a silence broken only by the wailing 

 of the mourners of fifty thousand dead ; by the woeful denun- 

 ciations 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 20 

 nearly its ordinary amount ; a case of plague occurred only 

 here and there, and the richer citizens who had flown from 

 the pest had returned to their dwellings. The remnant of 

 the people began to toil at the accustomed round of duty, or 

 of pleasure ; and the stream of city life bid fair to flow back 25 

 along its old bed, with renewed and uninterrupted vigor. 



The newly kindled hope was deceitful. The great plague, 



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