e more pious
part of the community thronged to the churches, from which they had been
so long absent, and returned thanks for their unexpected deliverance.
Others, who had been terrified into seriousness and devotion, speedily
forgot their former terrors, and resumed their old habits. Profaneness
and debauchery again prevailed, and the taverns were as well filled as
the churches. Solomon Eagle continued his midnight courses through the
streets; but he could no longer find an audience as before. Those who
listened to him only laughed at his denunciations of a new judgment, and
told him his preachings and prophesyings were now completely out of
date.

By this time numbers of those who had quitted London having returned to
it, the streets began to resume their wonted appearance. The utmost care
was taken by the authorities to cleanse and purify the houses, in order
to remove all chance of keeping alive the infection. Every room in every
habitation where a person had died of the plague--and there were few
that had escaped the visitation--was ordered to be whitewashed, and the
strongest fumigations were employed to remove the pestilential effluvia.
Brimstone, resin, and pitch were burnt in the houses of the poor;
benjamin, myrrh, and other more expensive perfumes in those of the
rich; while vast quantities of powder were consumed in creating blasts
to carry off the foul air. Large and constant fires were kept in all the
houses, and several were burnt down in consequence of the negligence of
their owners.

All goods, clothes, and bedding, capable of harbouring infection, were
condemned to be publicly burned, and vast bonfires were lighted in
Finsbury Fields and elsewhere, into which many hundred cart-loads of
such articles were thrown. The whole of Chowles's hoard, except the
plate, which he managed, with Judith's aid, to carry off and conceal in
certain hiding-places in the vaults of Saint Faith's, was taken from the
house in Nicholas-lane, and cast into the fire.

The cathedral was one of the first places ordered to be purified. The
pallets of the sick were removed and burned, and all the stains and
impurities with which its floor and columns were polluted were cleansed.
Nothing was left untried to free it from infection. It was washed
throughout with vinegar, fumigated with the strongest scents, and
several large barrels of pitch were set fire to in the aisles."

"It shall undergo another species of purification," said