h century were not
fools, and although I am well aware that this statement will be
received with scorn where it attracts any attention whatever, yet who
can say that the progress of the next half-century may not be as great
as that of the one now ended, and that the people of the next century
may not look upon us with the same contempt which we feel toward those
who lived fifty years ago?

Being an old man, I am, perhaps, a laggard who dwells in the past
rather than the present; still, it seems to me that such an article as
that which appeared recently in _Blackwood_ from the talented pen
of Prof. Mowberry, of Oxford University, is utterly unjustifiable.
Under the title of "Did the People of London Deserve their Fate?" he
endeavors to show that the simultaneous blotting out of millions of
human beings was a beneficial event, the good results of which we still
enjoy. According to him, Londoners were so dull-witted and stupid, so
incapable of improvement, so sodden in the vice of mere money-
gathering, that nothing but their total extinction would have sufficed,
and that, instead of being an appalling catastrophe, the doom of London
was an unmixed blessing. In spite of the unanimous approval with which
this article has been received by the press, I still maintain that such
writing is uncalled for, and that there is something to be said for the
London of the 19th century.

II.--WHY LONDON, WARNED, WAS UNPREPARED.

The indignation I felt in first reading the article alluded to still
remains with me, and it has caused me to write these words, giving some
account of what I must still regard, in spite of the sneers of the
present age, as the most terrible disaster that ever overtook a portion
of the human race. I shall not endeavor to place before those who read,
any record of the achievements pertaining to the time in question. But
I would like to say a few words about the alleged stupidity of the
people of London in making no preparations for a disaster regarding
which they had continual and ever-recurring warning. They have been
compared with the inhabitants of Pompeii making merry at the foot of a
volcano. In the first place, fogs were so common in London, especially
in winter, that no particular attention was paid to them. They were
merely looked upon as inconvenient annoyances, interrupting traffic and
prejudicial to health, but I doubt if anyone thought it possible for a
fog to become one vast smothering matt