e
people, that London was to be destroyed on the 16th of March, a belief
which seems to have been founded on two metrical prophecies, dated
respectively A.D. 1203 and 1598, said to be in the British Museum, where,
however, I have failed to find them; the former is:

"In eighteen hundred and forty-two
Four things the sun shall view;
London's rich and famous town
Hungry earth shall swallow down;
Storm and rain in France shall be,
Till every river runs a sea;
Spain shall be rent in twain,
And famine waste the land again;
So say I, the Monk of Dree,
In the twelve hundredth year and three."

The other is fathered on the famous astrologer, Dr. Dee:

"The Lord have mercy on you all,
Prepare yourselves for dreadful fall
Of house and land and human soul--
The measure of your sin is full.

"In the year One, Eight, and Forty-two,
Of the year that is so new,
In the third month, of that sixteen,
It may be a day or two between.

"Perhaps you'll soon be stiff and cold,
Dear Christian, be not stout and bold;
The mighty Kingly proud will see
This comes to pass, as my name's Dee."

And people were found to believe in this doggerel--especially frightened
were the Irish in London, and the lower classes generally. There was a
great exodus of the former, some even listening to the entreaties of
their friends, and returning to Ireland, and many of the latter moved
eastward of the church of St. Dunstan's, Stepney, which they considered
would be the last edifice to fall. Nor was belief in the earthquake
confined to the east end of London, for I read of a man, formerly a
police constable, living in Paddington, St. Marylebone, who sold a good
business to provide the means of his leaving London; and of a clerk, with
a salary of 200 pounds a year, residing in the same parish, resigning his
post, so that he might escape the calamity.

The fateful day arrived and passed, and, of course, the dreaded event did
not take place, but the belief in it is evidenced in a paragraph in the
_Times_ of 17 March:

"THE EARTHQUAKE.--The scene witnessed in the neighbourhoods of St.
Giles's and Seven Dials during the whole of yesterday was, perhaps,
the most singular that has presented itself for many years. Many of
the Irish resident in those localities have left for the shores of
the Emerald Isle, but by far the larger number, unblessed wi