Читать книгу Sketches of Imposture, Deception, and Credulity онлайн

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While the Bernese peasants were thus blindly yielding to superstitious delusions, a circumstance occurred which proved that the enlightened citizens of the British capital were as liable as the Swiss boors to the same species of folly. In 1750, on the 8th of February, and the 8th of March, two rather severe shocks of earthquake were felt in London. As exactly four weeks had elapsed between the two shocks, it was sagaciously concluded that a third would occur at a similar period. The fear which this idea excited was raised to the highest pitch by a mad life-guardsman, who went about exhorting to repentance, and predicting that, on the 5th of April, London and Westminster would be wholly destroyed. His predictions had at least one beneficial effect, that of filling the churches and emptying the gin-shops. When the supposed fatal hour arrived, the roads were thronged with thousands, who were flying into the country; so numerous were the fugitives that lodgings could hardly be obtained at Windsor, and many were obliged to sit in their coaches all night. Others, who had not the means of retiring to a distance, or whose fears were less violent, lay in boats all night, or waited in crowds in the open fields round the metropolis, till the dreadful moment was passed by, till the broad daylight showed them at once the city still uninjured, and the disgraceful absurdity of their own conduct.