does (Langford, 1989, pp. 284-285). In particular, one should consider the difference between Lecky and Langford's descriptions of the masses who thronged into Hyde Park the night of April 8. For Lecky, this group was "a dense mass of awestruck and affrighted hearers upon the judgments of the Lord" (1891, pp. 647-648), but for Langford it was "incredible numbers of people . . . who waited in the most fearful suspense into morning" (1989, pp. 284-285).
Speck (1979), on the other hand, attempts to demonstrate that there were different responses to the earthquakes: those of religious leaders and those of skeptics who saw the earthquakes only as natural occurrences without divine implications. He refers to the clerics' response as "clerical interpretations" and the city dwellers response only as a "substantial exodus." Speck, therefore, seems to seek to offer the most measured "hindsight" report of the earthquakes and the peoples' response to them, while both Lecky and Langford choose to attempt some evocation of the hysteria they believed surrounded the earthquakes. All of the reporters refer to Sherlock's pamphlet that, based on the primary reports and the seeming fact that more than 100,000 of the pamphlets were distributed, must have been an important contemporary document.
The primary report from Gentleman's Magazine seeks only to re
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