When it abated at last, and the runaways went back to town, Pepys among them, he notes the amazing number of beggars. These poor creatures were the widows or children of the craftsmen, or the craftsmen themselves whose ruin we have just noted. This was in January. The Plague, however, dragged on. In the week ending March 1, 1666, there were forty-two deaths from it. In the month of July it was still present in London, and reported to be raging at Colchester. In August, Pepys finds the house of one of his friends in Fenchurch Street shut up with the Plague, and it was said to be as bad as ever at Greenwich. This was the last entry about it, because in a week or two there was to happen an event of even greater importance than this great Plague. Observe that this was the last appearance of the Plague. Since 1665 it has never appeared in Europe, except in Marseilles in the year 1720. It is not extinct. It smoulders, like Vesuvius. There is nothing, so far as can be understood, to prevent its reappearance in London or anywhere else, unless it is the improved sanitation of modern cities. For instance, it was at Astrakhan in 1879. But it travelled no farther west. It is generated in the broad miasmatic valley of the Euphrates; there it lies, ready to be carried about the world, the last gift of Babylon to the nations. When that great city is built again, the centre of commerce between Europe and the East, the valley will once more be drained and cultivated, and the Plague will die and be no more seen. But who is to rebuild Babylon and to repeople the land of the Assyrians? There were two great Plagues of London in the seventeenth century before this--the last and greatest--one in 1603 and the other in 1625. I have before me two contemporary tracts upon these plagues. They illustrate what has been said of the Plague of 1665. Exactly the same things happened. In listening either to him of 1603, or to him of 1625, one hears the voice of 1665. I think that these tracts have never before been quoted. Yet it is quite clear to me that Defoe must have seen them both. The first is called _The Wonderful Year_, 1603. The author, who is anonymous, begins with weeping over the death of Queen Elizabeth. This tribute paid, with such exaggerated grief as belongs to his sense of loyalty, he rejoices, with equal extravagance, over the accession of James. This brings him to his real subject: