This period is carefully shut out; and we can only look at the great metropolis through the dense and discoloured medium of the smoke arising from the habitations of two millions of people. Well, until the Corporation in its goodness shall direct some alteration, we must make the best of the matter as it is; and so we are now ascending with many a pause the spiral staircase, with its three hundred and forty-five black marble steps, which leads to the summit. This is well lighted in the base by one or two large openings, and above by narrow slits in the wall. The breadth of the interior, nine feet from wall to wall, appears somewhat surprising to one who sees it for the first time, and has formed his notions of it from the exterior view. We are still ascending, and now the steps are growing sensibly shorter, the walls approach nearer to each other, we are not far from the top. With renewed vigour we are about to run up the little remaining distance, when the attendant lays his stick across in front to debar all advances without him. This conduct he explains by stating that, in consequence of the recent cases of suicide (which every one will remember), he has imposed on him the duty of being always present when there are any visitors on the balcony. We have gained the top at last, and what a scene is before, around, beneath us! The wind is blowing freshly and vigorously, and, to add to the self-possession of the visitor, the attendant encouragingly observes he would not stand there for a trifle if the railings were absent. With a shiver we assent to the pertinency of the remark; and placing our back for greater safety against the continuation of the pillar in the centre, and reminding ourselves that it is not true that the very edifice itself is, as has sometimes been considered, dangerous, and that the idea arose from the fact of the Monument having been at first used for astronomical observations, for which it was soon found unfit from the vibrations natural to such an erection, however secure in its build, we commence our brief survey. Though the view is not, and cannot be under such an atmosphere, very extensive, it is one that (out of London) the world cannot parallel. It is not beautiful—that sea of house-tops, with St. Paul's and countless other churches and public buildings rising up from its surface as from so many islands;—it is not sublime, in the physical idea of the words ;—yet “dull” indeed would he be of soul" in whose mind no sense of beauty and sublimity was raised as he gazed on that wonderful congregation of human homes.

66

The door from the staircase to the balcony faces the east; in that direction therefore we are now sending our inquiring glance. The Tower, with its great keep, is the first object of attention, of which we remember Fitz-Stephen says, "the mortar of its foundation was tempered with the blood of beasts." To the left of the Tower the long façade of the Mint arrests the eye, whilst to the right we see the roof of the Custom House, and the tiers of shipping moored in the Pool far away into the distance. Near, and directly in front of us, is the fairy-looking spire of St. Dunstan's in the East, one of the many churches we see around whose history is connected with that of the Monument by a close tie, as having arisen like the latter from the ashes of the Great Fire. Beyond, interminable lines of docks are dimly descried, and on a clear day the hills of Kent, nine or ten miles off. On the other side of the river a bright column of smoke and the sharp whistle of the engine direct us to the train of the Greenwich Railway just starting. Turning the corner of the pillar, we behold on the south

the countless chimneys of the breweries and other manufactories of Southwark rising up against the background of the Surrey hills, and the lofty piles of warehouses which edge the river bank, over one of which the church of St. Mary Overies rears its lofty and proud-looking tower, as though indignant at the unfitness of its humbler neighbours for such antique and romance-honoured walls. The bridges, those glorious architectural triumphs, and the curving Thames which they bestride, form a highly picturesque feature from the Monument. There is London Bridge, the youngest, and perhaps the noblest of the whole, with the Fishmongers' Hall at its foot; Southwark and Blackfriars in a tolerably straight line; then comes Waterloo crossing the curve; and beyond, the Thames, with the black sluggish barges so characteristic of this part of the river, is lost to our smoke-bedimmed vision. But though the bridge of Westminster is invisible, not so its famous Abbey: there it stands, with its dark body and lofty towers advanced city-wards, as if to defend its sacred precincts from the inroads of irreligion and wickedness, ever rife in populous places. But the great feature of the scene is the view westwards of St. Paul's. Its vast size and noble proportions are perhaps from no other spot so strikingly developed. Instead of looking down upon it, as we do, or appear to do, upon every other object, we have rather the sense of looking up to it even from this elevation of two hundred and two feet. Neither does the mass of houses around it appear at all to lessen its height or form. It might stand upon them; so grandly does it appear to risebase, cupola, and cross-above all obstructions. On the north there is little to attract attention: churches and house-roofs, house-roofs and churches, extend from the farthest point of sight down to the base of the column on which we stand, and require no more particular notice; unless we may just mention that, among the other buildings particularly conspicuous, stand the lofty Guildhall to the left, and the tall tower of the Blackwall Railway to the right. We may conclude this hasty sketch of our view from the Monument on a gusty August afternoon by two or three general remarks. What has been called the natural basin of London may thence be seen very clearly, although its edges are not distinctly definable in some parts. Looking round from Islington, we have Highgate, Hampstead, the elevated land to the left of Westminster Abbey, the Surrey and Kent hills. And nearly the whole of this vast area is occupied by London! for few indeed are the spaces vacant of houses which the eye can detect even from the balcony of the Monument. How different would have been the view presented from the same spot prior to the erection of the Monument, and the event which it commemorates, one hundred and seventy-five years ago, had there then been any means of obtaining such an elevation; when Stratford, Hackney, Islington, and Charing Cross were suburban villages, with many a pleasant field between them and London; when Lambeth and Southwark showed more trees than habitations; and when St. Paul's was a long building with transepts projecting from the centre, north and south, and with a square tower rising upwards at the point of their intersection! A third and still more extraordinary view has yet to be mentioned the view which met the eye of the well-known diarist Pepys, when he went up to the top of Barking Church, and there saw the "saddest sight of desolation" perhaps ever beheld. But let us not anticipate.

It was on the "Lord's Day," says Pepys, the 3rd of September, 1666, that

"some of our maids sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast to-day, Jane called us up about three in the morning to tell us of a great fire they saw in the city. So I rose and slipped on my night-gown, and went to the window; and thought it to be on the back-side of Mark Lane at the farthest, but, being unused to such fires as followed, I thought it far enough off; and so went to bed again, and to sleep. About seven rose again to dress myself, and then looked out at the window, and saw the fire not so much as it was, and further off. By and by Jane comes and tells me that she hears that above three hundred houses have been burned down to-night by the fire we saw, and that it is now burning down all Fish Street, by London Bridge. So I made myself ready presently, and walked to the Tower, and there up upon one of the high places, Sir J. Robinson's little son going up with me; and there I did see the houses at that end of the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side the end of the bridge."

The conflagration, which in so short a space had exhibited its destructive character, broke out some time after midnight, in the house of one Farryner, the King's baker, in Pudding Lane. This person stated, in his evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons, that he had, after twelve o'clock on Saturday night, gone through every room, and found no fire but in one chimney, where the room was paved with bricks, which fire he diligently raked up in embers. As a matter of fact, this was all he could state: as to his opinions, he expressed himself as decidedly satisfied that his house must have been purposely fired. Whatever its origin, the progress of the fire was most startling,—we should say wonderful, but that the construction of the houses-generally timber, pitched over on the outside-the thatched roofs, and the narrowness of the streets, where the buildings of the opposite sides almost touched each other, were all evidently calculated to facilitate in the very highest degree the ravages of the fearful element. Nor was this all. The month of August had been characterised by an extraordinary drought, and the timber of the houses had been as it were half burnt already by the continual heat; and lastly, during nearly the whole time the fire lasted, a furious east wind blew; making in all such an unhappy conjunction of circumstances, that we need not wonder that other than pious people looked with fear and trembling on the event, as some more than ordinary visitation of an offended Deity.

The then Lord Mayor, on whose steadiness, judgment, and boldness so much depended, appears to have been unequal to the occasion; and thus, the first few hours being lost without any decisive measures, all was lost. Early in the forenoon Pepys went to Whitehall, and received from the King a command to bid the Mayor "spare no houses, but pull down before the fire every way.” After long search, Pepys "met my Lord Mayor in Cannon Street like a man spent, with a handkerchief about his neck. To the King's message he cried, like a fainting woman, Lord, what can I do? I am spent; people will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses; but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it; that he needed no more soldiers; and that, for himself, he must go and refresh himself, having been up all night. So he left me, and I him, and walked home; seeing people almost distracted, and no manner of means used to quench the fire.

The houses too so very thick thereabouts, and full of matter for

burning, as pitch and tar, in Thames Street; and warehouses of oil, and wines, and brandy, and other things." Soon after he "met with the King and Duke of York in their barge, and with them to Queenhithe. . . . "River full of lighters and boats taking in goods, and goods swimming in the water; and I observed that hardly one lighter or boat in three that had the goods of a house in, but there was a pair of virginals in it." Pepys's observing eye noticed also that the "poor pigeons were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconies till they burned their wings and fell down."

In the afternoon Pepys is on the "water again, and to the fire, up and down, it still increasing, and the wind great. So near the fire as we could for smoke; and all over the Thames, with one's faces in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of fire-drops. This is very true; so as houses were burned by these drops and flakes of fire, three or four, nay, five or six houses, one from another. When we could endure no more upon the water, we to a little alehouse on the Bankside (Southwark), over against the Three Cranes, and there staid till it was almost dark, and saw the fire grow, and, as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners, and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid, malicious, bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire. . .

We staid till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long it made me weep to see it." The peculiar form of the great body of flame is also referred to by the Rev. T. Vincent, in his tract called God's terrible Advice to the City by Plague and Fire,' who says finely, "The burning was then in fashion of a bow; a dreadful bow it was, such as mine eyes never before had seen; a bow which had God's arrow in it with a flaming point." Evelyn, who, like Pepys, was an eye-witness, and described only what he saw,

was also at the Bankside, Southwark, but later in the evening, when he beheld an awful picture. "I saw," he says, "the whole south part of the City burning, from Cheapside to the Thames, and all along Cornhill (for it likewise kindled back against the wind as well as forward), Tower Street, Fenchurch Street, Gracious (Gracechurch) Street, and so along to Baynard's Castle, and was taking hold of St. Paul's church, to which the scaffolds contributed exceedingly. The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonished, that from the beginning, I know not by what despondency or fate, they hardly stirred to quench it; so that there was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures, without at all attempting to save even their goods; such a strange consternation there was upon them, so as it burned, both in breadth and length, the churches, public halls, Exchange, hospitals, monuments, and ornaments, leaping after a prodigious manner from house to house and street to street, at great distances from one to the other; for the heat, with a long set of fair and warm weather, had even ignited the air and prepared the materials to conceive the fire, which devoured after an incredible manner houses, furniture, and everything. Here we saw the Thames covered with goods floating, all the barges and boats laden with what some had time and courage to save; as on the other, the carts, &c., carrying out to the fields, which for many miles were strewed with moveables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh, the miserable and calamitous spectacle! such as haply the world had not seen the like since the foundation of it, nor to be outdone till the universal conflagration of it. All the sky was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seen for above forty miles round about for many nights: God grant mine eyes may never see the like! who now saw above ten thousand houses all in one flame: the noise and cracking and thunder of the impetuous flames, the shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like an hideous storm, and the air all about so hot and inflamed that at last one was not able to approach it; so that they were forced to stand still and let the flames burn on, which they did for near two miles in length and one in breadth. The clouds also of smoke were dismal, and reached, upon computation, near fifty miles in length." Mr. Vincent also says,-" The cloud of smoke was so great that travellers did ride at noonday some six miles together in the shadow thereof, though there were no other cloud besides to be seen in the sky." From the same authority we obtain one or two other interesting glimpses of the splendid horrors of this the first night :-" Amongst other things, the sight of Guildhall was a fearful spectacle, which stood the whole body of it together in view for several hours together after the fire had taken it, without flames, (I suppose because the timber was such solid oak), in a bright shining coal, as if it had been a palace of gold, or a great building of burnished brass."

During Monday, the 4th, the fire extended as far as the Middle Temple westwards, and Tower Street eastwards, including, besides the streets already mentioned, all Fleet Street, the Old Bailey, Ludgate Hill, Warwick Lane, Newgate, Paul's Chain, Watling Street, Thames Street, and Billingsgate; the stones of Paul's flying, says Evelyn, "like grenadoes," its melting lead flowing through the streets in a stream, the pavements everywhere "glowing with fiery redness, so as