from the beginning,--is in his best manner, and so real that it is impossible to resist its air of absolute truthfulness. But the state of the shut-up streets, the dreadful sounds and sights, the brooding heat and stillness of the long and awful days, the cloud of fate that is about the doomed city, are beyond description impressive. This curious spectator of all things, this impartial yet eager looker-on, determined to see all that can be seen, prudent yet fearless, adopting every precaution, yet neglecting no means of investigation, inquiring everywhere, always with his eyes and ears open, at once a philosophical inquirer and an eager gossip, is without doubt Defoe himself. But he is also a marked figure of the time. He is like Pepys; he is almost, but for the unmistakable difference between the bourgeois and the fine gentleman, like Evelyn. He is one of the special kind of man born to illustrate that period. Pepys would have found means for some piece of junketing even in the midst of his alarm, whereas Defoe thinks of his property, when he has time to think of anything but the plague, which is a very natural modification consequent on the changes of the times. But they are at bottom the same. While, however, this central figure remains the characteristic but not elevated personage with whom we are already acquainted, the history which he records is done with a tragic force and completeness which it is impossible to surpass. In this there is nothing commonplace, no wearying monotony; the very statistics have a tragic solemnity in them; the awful unseen presence dominates everything. We scarcely breathe while we move about the streets emptied of all passers-by, or with a suspicious throng in the middle of the way keeping as far apart as possible from the houses. This is not mere prose: it is poetry in its most rare form; it is an ideal representation, in all its sober details, of one of the most tragical moments of human suffering and fate.