fire
was not much nearer; and at Tooting you would have sworn it was at the
next village. The night was, nevertheless, a very fine one, with a
brilliant moon.[2] Not a soul seemed in bed in the villages, though it
was ten o'clock. There was a talk of the French, as if they had caused it.
By degrees, I began to meet carts laden with goods; and on entering the
borders of Southwark, the expectation of the scene was rendered truly
awful, there was such a number of people abroad, yet such a gazing silence.
Now and then one person called to another; but the sound seemed as if in
bravado, or brutish. An old man, in a meeting of cross-roads, was
haranguing the people in the style of former years, telling them of God's
judgments, and asserting that this was the pouring out of that other vial
of wrath, which had been typified by the Fiery Sword,--a spectacle
supposed to have been seen in the sky at the close of the year sixty-four.
The plague was thought to have been announced by a comet.

"Very different from this quieter scene, was the one that presented itself,
on my getting through the last street, and reaching the water-side. The
comet itself seemed to have come to earth, and to be burning and waving in
one's face, the whole city being its countenance, and its hair flowing
towards Whitehall in a volume of fiery smoke. The river was of a bloodish
colour like the flame, and the sky over head was like the top of a
pandemonium. From the Tower to St. Paul's there was one mass of fire and
devastation, the heat striking in your eyes, and the air being filled with
burning sparkles, and with the cries of people flying, or removing goods
on the river. Ever and anon distant houses fell in, with a sort of
gigantic shuffling noise, very terrible. I saw a steeple give way, like
some ghastly idol, its long white head toppling, and going sideways, as if
it were drunk. A poor girl near me, who paced a few yards up and down,
holding her sides as if with agony, turned and hid her eyes at this
spectacle, crying out, 'Oh, the poor people! oh the mothers and babies!'
She was one of the lowest of an unfortunate class of females. She thought,
as I did, that there must be a dreadful loss of lives; but it was the most
miraculous circumstance of that miraculous time, that the fire killed
nobody, except some women and infirm persons with fright.

"I took boat, and got to Whitehall, where I found the King in a more
serious and stirring humour than eve