by a King who cared for little else than worldly pleasure; and the serious mood of the former time was exchanged for a gay and heartless spirit, which too soon spread over the whole nation. 2. So great was the delight of the people at getting back their King, that no care was taken to prevent him from taking all power into his own hands. The Parliament granted him a yearly allowance of £1,200,000 for life; and with part of this money he supported some regiments for the protection of his own person. Thus all that had been gained by the struggle with monarchy was lost again. 3. About thirty of the men who had taken part in putting Charles the First to death were tried, and ten of them were executed. The bodies of Cromwell and two other leaders of the Parliament were taken from their graves and hanged on gibbets. 1665 4. In this reign London was visited by a terrible 'Plague, which in one summer carried off 100,000 persons. The rich fled in terror from the city; trade and commerce stood still; grass A.D. grew in the streets, the silence of which was broken only by the rumbling of the dead-cart and the wail of the plague-stricken people. Some, however, tried to drown their fear in drunkenness and *rioting, even in the midst of the terrible plague. 5. On many of the dwellings where the disease had entered was written, "Lord, have mercy on us.' Great pits were dug in the neighbourhood of London, a quantity of lime was thrown in, and into these the bodies of the victims were thrown, heaps upon heaps, from the dead-cart. 6. In the following year the Great Fire of London broke out in the night of Sunday, Sep 1666 tember 2nd. The wind was high, and the A. D. flames spread rapidly among the wooden houses. They burned fiercely for four days, and laid waste the City,1 properly so called. 7. Hundreds of streets, thousands of houses, and many churches, including St. Paul's,2 were destroyed. It is wonderful that not more than seven or eight lives were lost. The flames made night as light as day for ten miles around London! This awful fire, however, did great good, by destroying those parts in which the plague 'lurked, and burning out its last dregs. dregs, remains. lurked, remained hid. plague, sickness. 1 The City. The oldest part of London is so called. It extends from the Temple to the Tower, and from Smithfield to the Thames. 2 St. Paul's.-The oldest church in ri-ot-ing, noisy revelry. London; built on the site, it was said, 16. THE GREAT PLAGUE AND THE GREAT FIRE. 1. In former times, especially in Eastern countries, men were not so cleanly, either in their persons or in their houses, as they have now become. In consequence of the dirt that was allowed to gather in the narrow streets and dingy rooms, many diseases were common, which have now disappeared. 2. The Plague is the name by which the most horrible and destructive of these is mentioned in history. Scarcely any reign of tolerable length passed away without a visit from some dreadful *pestilence, mainly caused and fostered by filth. But the Great Plague, which visited England early in the reign of Charles the Second, was the last and perhaps the worst of these terrific disorders. 3. At first men began to sicken, one by one, in the beginning of summer, and to drop in the streets, as if suddenly shot by some unseen hand. But in a week or two the deaths came to be counted by the hundred, and soon by the thousand. Every person, who had money enough, went out of London that dreadful summer; but of course there were vast numbers who could not do so. 1665 4. A cross of red was painted on the door of any house where a person was seized with the Plague, and for a month no one was allowed to go into or to leave the place. And every night a cart went through the 'silent streets, while the driver, ringing a bell, cried, "Bring out your dead." When he had filled the cart with corpses, he drove them away to a large hole, into which they were thrown with a quantity of lime. A.D. 5. Madmen added to the terror of this time by the frightful howls they uttered in the grass-grown streets; and one was especially noticed, as he ran about screaming in the night-time with a vessel full of blazing coals on his head. Some of the citizens went to live in boats on the Thames, as a means of avoiding the infection; but this often proved useless. 6. The sickness came between the nearest and dearest; and many a poor man was obliged to leave his few shillings of weekly wages on the door-step of his house, where perhaps his wife or a little one lay ill, and call aloud, before he went away, that some one within might come and take the money. If he had gone in and caught the infection, all the support of the family would have been lost. 7. It was not until the winter cold began to be felt that the violence of the Plague abated; and even then it did not wholly leave the close, foul lanes of the great city of London. It did not finally go until it was burned out. 8. Next year a terrific Fire broke out in London. It began in a baker's shop near Fish Street Hill. An east wind was blowing very fiercely, and the season had been very dry, so that the flames had both force and food. All along the Thames and backward into the City the fire spread from house to house, leaping across streets and breaks in the lines of building, as if it were a live wild beast bent on devouring all before it. 1666 A. D. 9. The people were in many cases too much 'stupefied to carry their property away, but ran crying and wringing their hands in a helpless manner. The Thames was covered with floating goods and boats carrying off what could be saved; and the fields all around London were filled with heaps of furniture and covered with tents under which, on a little straw, the poor took refuge. Above them was a sky glowing like red-hot copper; and around them the air was hot, like the breath of a furnace, and was filled with myriads of sparks whirling before the wind. 10. There were ten thousand houses burning at once; and the great dark clouds of smoke that arose from the flaming oil and resin in the warehouses by the Thames, rolled fifty miles away to *astonish the simple country folks of Berkshire and Oxford. Nobody could go near the streets that were on fire, both by reason of the extreme heat and of the danger that arose from the falling timber and the melted lead that came pouring off the roofs. 11. Perhaps the grandest sight of all was the |