Page:A Journal of the Plague Year (1722).djvu/213

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the PLAGUE.
205

it was eſie to perceive it was all Diſtraction, and the Complaints of Diſtreſs’d and diſtemper’d People.

I believe it was every where thus at that time, for the Plague rag’d for ſix or ſeven Weeks beyond all that I have expreſs’d; and came even to ſuch a height, that in the Extremity, they began to break into that excellent Order, of which I have ſpoken ſo much, in behalf of the Magiſtrates, namely, that no dead Bodies were ſeen in the Streets or Burials in the Day-time, for there was a Neceſſity, in this Extremety, to bear with its being otherwiſe, for a little while.

One thing I cannot omit here, and indeed I thought it was extraordinary, at leaſt, it ſeemed a remarkable Hand of Divine Juſtice, (viz) That all the Predictors, Aſtrologers, Fortune-tellers, and what they call’d cunning-Men, Conjurers, and the like; calculators of Nativities, and dreamers of Dreams, and ſuch People, were gone and vaniſh’d, not one of them was to be found: I am, verily, perſwaded that a great Number of them fell in the heat of the Calamity, having ventured to ſtay upon the Proſpect of getting great Eſtates; and indeed their Gain was but too great for a time through the Madneſs and Folly of the People; but now they were ſilent, many of them went to their long Home, not able to foretel their own Fate, or to calculate their own Nativities; ſome have been critical enough to ſay, that every one of them dy’d; I dare not affirm that; but this I muſt own, that I never heard of one of them that ever appear’d after the Calamity was over.

But to return to my particular Obſervations, during this dreadful part of the Viſitation: I am now come, as I have ſaid, to the Month of September, which was the moſt dreadful of its kind, I believe, that ever London ſaw; for by all the Ac-