history is attempted, but simply a record of daily
impressions of the streets and houses. On his first sight of the red
cross upon a door, the diarist cries out, "Lord, have mercy upon us," in
genuine terror and pity. The coachman sickens on his box and cannot
drive his horses home. The gallant draws the curtains of a sedan chair
to salute some fair lady within, and finds himself face to face with the
death-dealing eyes and breath of a plague-stricken patient. Few people
move along the streets, and at night the passenger sees and shuns the
distant lights of the link-boys guiding the dead to their burial. A
cowardly parson flies upon some flimsy excuse from his dangerous post,
and makes a weak apology on his first reappearance in the pulpit.
Altogether it is a picture unmatched in its broken vivid flashes, in
which the cruelty and wildness of desperation mingle with the despairing
cry of pity.

The Dutch War was raging then, not on the High Seas only, but at the
very gates of England; and Pepys, whose important and responsible
position as Clerk of the Acts of the Navy gave him much first-hand
information, tells many great stories in his casual way. We hear the
guns distinctly and loud, booming at the mouth of the Thames. The
press-gang sweeps the streets, and starving women, whose husbands have
been taken from them, weep loudly in our ears. Sailors whose wages have
not been paid desert their ships, in some cases actually joining the
Dutch and fighting against their comrades. One of the finest passages
gives a heartrending and yet bracing picture of the times. "About a
dozen able, lusty, proper men came to the coach-side with tears in their
eyes, and one of them that spoke for the rest began, and said to Sir W.
Coventry, 'We are here a dozen of us, that have long known and loved,
and served our dead commander, Sir Christopher Mings, and have now done
the last office of laying him in the ground. We would be glad we had any
other to offer after him, and in revenge of him. All we have is our
lives; if you will please to get His Royal Highness to give us a
fire-ship among us all, here are a dozen of us, out of all which, choose
you one to be commander; and the rest of us, whoever he is, will serve
him; and, if possible, do that which shall show our memory of our dead
commander, and our revenge.' Sir W. Coventry was herewith much moved, as
well as I, who could hardly abstain from weeping, and took their names,
and so parted."