built a water-gate here, and that when he was dead his ashes were placed in a vessel of brass upon a high pinnacle of stone over the said gate. The place has been a market for fish ever since 1351; all fish is sold by the tale, except salmon, which is sold by weight, and oysters and shell-fish, which are sold by measure. A fish dinner (price 2s.) may be obtained at the Three Tuns Tavern at Billingsgate.

Opposite Billingsgate is The Coal Exchange, by J. B. Bunning, opened 1849. Botolph Lane and Wharf commemorate the Church of St. Botolph, Billingsgate, not rebuilt after the Fire.

On St. Dunstan's Hill, between Tower Street and Little Thames Street, is the Church of St. Dunstan-in-the-East, one of Wren's restorations. The spire rests on four flying buttresses, in feeble caricature of the grand steeple of St. Nicholas at Newcastle. It was Wren's first attempt at placing a steeple upon quadrangular columns, and was at first regarded by him with great anxiety. Afterwards he was very proud of this miserable work, and when told that a dreadful hurricane had ruined all the steeples in the City, said, "Not St. Dunstan's, I am sure." On the south of the church is a large tomb, with an effigy of Sir William Russell, 1705, a benefactor to the parish. On the north. wall of the chancel is a monument to Sir John Moore (1702), whose loyalty as Lord Mayor (1681-2) is commemorated in the "Ziloah" of Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel."

Archbishop Morton, the tutor of Sir Thomas More, was rector of St. Dunstan-in-the-East. Rooks, till recently, built their nests in the trees in the churchyard.*

* See "Chronicles of St. Dunstan -in-the-East," by the Rev. T. Boyles Murray.

Mincing Lane, which leads northwards from hence, was "Mincheon Lane," so called from tenements in it which belonged to the Mincheons, or nuns of St. Helen's.

The Church of St. Mary-at-Hill was partially rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire, but only the east end remains from his work. John Brand, author of "The Popular Antiquities," was rector, and was buried in the church, 1806. Dr. Young, author of "Night Thoughts," was married here, May, 1731.

On Fish Street Hill the Black Prince had a palace. Here, and as we emerge into King William Street, the great feature on the right is the Monument, finished 1680, by desire of Charles II., from designs of Wren, to commemorate the Great Fire of 1666. It is a fluted Doric column 202 feet in height, this being the exact number of feet by which it is distant from the site of the house in Pudding Lane, where the Fire began. The dragons on the pedestal are by Edward Pierce. The large and comical relief by Caius Gabriel Cibber commemorates the destruction and restoration of the City.

"The last figure on the left is intended to express London lying disconsolately upon her ruins, with the insignia of her civic grandeur partly buried beneath them. Behind her is Time gradually raising her up again, by whose side stands a female figure, typical of Providence, pointing with a sceptre formed of a winged hand enclosing an eye to the angels of peace and plenty seated on the descending clouds. Opposite the City, on an elevated pavement, stands the effigy of Charles II. in a Roman habit, advancing to her aid attended by the Sciences holding a terminal figure of Nature, Liberty waving a hat, and Architecture bearing the instruments of design and the plan of the new City. Behind the king stands his brother the Duke of York, attended by Fortitude leading a lion, and Justice bearing a laurel Under an arch beneath the raised pavement on which these figures stand appears Envy looking upward, emitting pestiferous flames,

coronet.

and gnawing a heart. Eleven of the preceding figures are sculptured in alto-relievo; whilst the background represents in basso-relievo the Fire of London, with the consternation of the citizens on the left-hand, and the rebuilding of it upon the right, with labourers at work upon unfinished houses."- Wilkinson's Londina Illustrata.

The pillar is surmounted by a metal vase of flames. The original design was to have a plain column, with flames bursting from holes all the way up, and a phoenix at the top.

The Fire began early in the morning of Sunday' the 3rd of September, 1666, in the house of one Farryner, the King's Baker, in Pudding Lane. This man, when crossexamined before the Committee of the House of Commons, proved that he had left his house perfectly safe at twelve o'clock on Saturday night, and was convinced that it had been purposely fired. The rapidity with which the flames spread, chiefly owing to the number of houses built of timber, defied all measures for arresting them, though on the afternoon of the first day the King sent Pepys from Whitehall to the Lord Mayor, commanding him to "spare no houses, but pull down before the fire every way." By the first night Pepys could "endure no more upon the water, and from Bankside (Southwark) saw the fire grow, and as it grew darker, appear 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 flame of an ordinary fire. We staid," he says, "till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side of the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long." Evelyn describes the dreadful scene of the same night—

"I saw 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 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 receive 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 strewn 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 a 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."

At noon on Tuesday the 5th the Fire first began to be checked, at the Temple Church in Fleet Street, and Pie Corner in Smithfield, gunpowder being then used in destroying the houses, and producing gaps too wide to be overleaped by the flames, but by that time the destruction had included eighty-nine churches, the City gates, Guildhall, many public structures, hospitals, schools, libraries, thirteen thousand two hundred dwelling-houses, four hundred streets; out of twenty-six wards it had utterly destroyed fifteen, and left eight others shattered and half burnt. The ruins of the City covered four hundred and thirty-six acres, the part left standing occupied seventy-five acres: the loss was eleven