Morning was sultry as noon; evening
brought but little refreshment; while the night was hotter than the day.
People complained that the season was even more sickly than in the plague
year, and prophesied a new and worse outbreak of the pestilence. Was not
this the fatal year about which there had been darkest prophecies? 1666!
Something awful, something tragical was to make this triplicate of sixes
for ever memorable. Sixty-five had been terrible, sixty-six was to bring
a greater horror; doubtless a recrudescence of that dire malady which had
desolated London.
"And this time," says one modish raven, "'twill be the quality that will
suffer. The lower 'classis' has paid its penalty, and only the strong and
hardy are left. We. have plenty of weaklings and corrupt constitutions that
will take fire at a spark. I should not wonder were the contagion to rage
worst at Whitehall. The buildings lie low, and there is ever a nucleus
of fever somewhere in that conglomeration of slaughter-houses, bakeries,
kitchens, stables, cider-houses, coal-yards, and over-crowded servants'
lodgings."
"One gets but casual whiffs from their private butcheries and bakeries,"
says another. "What I complain of is the atmosphere of his Majesty's
apartments, where one can scarce breathe for the stench of those cursed
spaniels he so delights in.
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