EARTHQUAKES.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—You wonder if the West would behave as well as Japan under lam circumstances, and particularly what would happen
in London. In Mr. Newman Flower's recently published life of Handel (page 313) there is a reference of considerable interest :-
" The earthquake shocks began (in London) on 5th February (1750). . . . Society departed out of London in droves. Those who remained were frightened to go out after dark lest they should be killed by the falling tiles from house-roofs, and equally frightened to remain at home in case their houses should collapse over their heads. The madness of the multitude was prodigious,' wrote Mrs. Montagu on 20th February, nearly fifty of the people I had sent to, to play cards here on the Saturday following, went out of town to avoid being swallowed.' . . . The people were pulled up rudely by the shocks. This London, then, was Babylon. They would escape from it before the vengeance of God descended. The churches were crowded . . . The rich and poor trembled sleepless in their houses by night . . . Only when the sun rose in its accus- tomed place beyond the chimney pots did they believe that God had not singled out London for vengeance. With the coming of nightfall again the old fears returned ; and, in the dreadful shades, frightened figures slunk past with the palsied steps of fear. London forgot all else save the Earthquakes."
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