Page:History of the Royal Society.djvu/142

 Thus far I was come in my intended Work, when my Hand was stop'd, and my Mind disturb'd from writing, by the two greatest Disasters that ever befel our Nation, the fatal Infection, which overspread the City of London in sixty five, and the dreadful firing of the City itself in the Year ensuing. These two Calamities may well be sufficient to excuse the Delay of publishing this Book; when the one of them devour'd as many Men, and the other as many Books, as the cruellest Incursion of the Goths and Vandals had ever done.

The Plague was indeed an irreparable Damage to the whole Kingdom; but that which chiefly added to the Misery, was the Time wherein it happened. For what could be a more deplorable Accident, than that so many brave Men should be cut off by the Arrow that flies in the dark, when our Country was ingag'd in foreign War, and when their Lives might have been honourably ventur'd on a glorious Theatre in its Defence? And we had scarce recover'd this first Misfortune, when we received a second and a deeper Wound; which cannot be equall'd in all History, if either we consider the Obscurity of its Beginning, the irresistible Violence of its Progress, the Horror of its Appearance, or the Wideness of the Ruin it made, in one of the most renown'd Cities of the World.

Yet when, on the one side, I remember what Desolation these Scourges of Mankind have left behind them; and on the other, when I reflect on the Magnanimity wherewith the English Nation did support the Mischiefs; I find, that I have not more Reason to bewail the one, than to admire the other.