at a stranger could not
miss the numbers that were lost. Neither was there any miss of the
inhabitants as to their dwellings--few or no empty houses were to be
seen, or if there were some, there was no want of tenants for them.

I wish I could say that as the city had a new face, so the manners of
the people had a new appearance. I doubt not but there were many that
retained a sincere sense of their deliverance, and were that heartily
thankful to that Sovereign Hand that had protected them in so dangerous
a time; it would be very uncharitable to judge otherwise in a city so
populous, and where the people were so devout as they were here in the
time of the visitation itself; but except what of this was to be found
in particular families and faces, it must be acknowledged that the
general practice of the people was just as it was before, and very
little difference was to be seen.

Some, indeed, said things were worse; that the morals of the people
declined from this very time; that the people, hardened by the danger
they had been in, like seamen after a storm is over, were more wicked
and more stupid, more bold and hardened, in their vices and immoralities
than they were before; but I will not carry it so far neither. It would
take up a history of no small length to give a particular of all
the gradations by which the course of things in this city came to be
restored again, and to run in their own channel as they did before.

Some parts of England were now infected as violently as London had been;
the cities of Norwich, Peterborough, Lincoln, Colchester, and other
places were now visited; and the magistrates of London began to set
rules for our conduct as to corresponding with those cities. It is true
we could not pretend to forbid their people coming to London, because it
was impossible to know them asunder; so, after many consultations, the
Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen were obliged to drop it. All they could
do was to warn and caution the people not to entertain in their houses
or converse with any people who they knew came from such infected
places.

But they might as well have talked to the air, for the people of
London thought themselves so plague-free now that they were past all
admonitions; they seemed to depend upon it that the air was restored,
and that the air was like a man that had had the smallpox, not capable
of being infected again. This revived that notion that the infection was
all in the air, tha