ich I cannot say that I ever saw
they showed any great token of thankfulness, and hardly anything of
reformation, though they did not want being told that their crying vices
might without breach of charity be said to have gone far in bringing
that terrible judgement upon the whole nation.

The face of London was--now indeed strangely altered: I mean the whole
mass of buildings, city, liberties, suburbs, Westminster, Southwark, and
altogether; for as to the particular part called the city, or within
the walls, that was not yet much infected. But in the whole the face of
things, I say, was much altered; sorrow and sadness sat upon every face;
and though some parts were not yet overwhelmed, yet all looked deeply
concerned; and, as we saw it apparently coming on, so every one looked
on himself and his family as in the utmost danger. Were it possible to
represent those times exactly to those that did not see them, and give
the reader due ideas of the horror 'that everywhere presented itself, it
must make just impressions upon their minds and fill them with surprise.
London might well be said to be all in tears; the mourners did not go
about the streets indeed, for nobody put on black or made a formal dress
of mourning for their nearest friends; but the voice of mourners was
truly heard in the streets. The shrieks of women and children at the
windows and doors of their houses, where their dearest relations were
perhaps dying, or just dead, were so frequent to be heard as we passed
the streets, that it was enough to pierce the stoutest heart in the
world to hear them. Tears and lamentations were seen almost in every
house, especially in the first part of the visitation; for towards the
latter end men's hearts were hardened, and death was so always before
their eyes, that they did not so much concern themselves for the loss
of their friends, expecting that themselves should be summoned the next
hour.

Business led me out sometimes to the other end of the town, even when
the sickness was chiefly there; and as the thing was new to me, as
well as to everybody else, it was a most surprising thing to see those
streets which were usually so thronged now grown desolate, and so few
people to be seen in them, that if I had been a stranger and at a loss
for my way, I might sometimes have gone the length of a whole street (I
mean of the by-streets), and seen nobody to direct me except watchmen
set at the doors of such houses as were shut