burden upon parishes. One would suppose that small temptation was needed to quit a scene so desolate and dispiriting! Most of us are familiar with the bleak and cheerless aspect of the ruin caused by fire,—with the unutterable sadness of the shattered, blackened walls, the confused masses of wreckage and dilapidation, the silence and gloom where but a few hours before all was life, mirth, and domestic order. Think of this pitiful spectacle extended over so wide an area as was covered by the Great Fire! "It was a sight," says Richard Baxter, "that might have given any man a lively sense of the vanity of this world, and all the wealth and glory of it, and of the future conflagration of all the world. To see the flames mount up towards heaven, and proceed so furiously without restraint; to see the streets filled with people astonished, that had scarce sense left them to lament their own calamity; to see the fields filled with heaps of goods; and sumptuous buildings, ruinous rooms, costly furniture, and household stuff, yea, warehouses and furnished shops and libraries, all on a flame, and none durst come near to receive anything; to see the King and nobles ride about the streets, beholding all these desolations, and none could afford the least relief; to see the air as far as could be beheld, so filled with the smoke, that the sun shone through it with a colour like blood; yea, even when it was setting in the west, it so appeared to them that dwelt on the west side of the city. But the dolefullest sight of all was afterwards, to see what a ruinous confused place the city was, by chimnies and steeples only standing in the midst of cellars and heaps of rubbish; so that it was hard to know where the streets had been, and dangerous, of a long time, to pass through the ruins, because of vaults and fire

in them. No man that seeth not such a thing can have a right apprehension of the dreadfulness of it."

In his poem of "Annus Mirabilis," Dryden concludes a vivid, if rhetorical, description of the Great Fire with a reference to the popular superstition which associated and the Plague with the appearance of two comets :—

"The utmost malice of the stars is past,

And two dire comets, which have scourged the town,
In their own Plague and Fire have breathed their last.
Or dimly in their sinking sockets frown."

One great blessing the Fire conferred upon the people of London,-it so cleansed and purified their city that it knew the Plague no more.

The work of re-building was begun with promptitude and carried on with energy. So rapid was its progress that in four years ten thousand houses were erected. Under the careful direction of a special commission, consisting of the principal judges, the unfortunate citizens evicted by the conflagration were restored as nearly as possible to their proper lands or situations. Funds were provided by the imposition of a tax of one shilling on every chaldron of coals brought into the Port of London. And the direction of operations was entrusted to the genius of Doctor, afterwards Sir Christopher, Wren, who was appointed Surveyor General and Principal Architect for re-building the whole city. Unfortunately his magnificent plan, which would have given us a capital unequalled in the world for conveniency and beauty, was not adopted; though his energy prevailed over official obstruction and private greed to a considerable extent, and the new London was vastly superior to the old.

Among the public buildings which illustrate his fertility

of resource, and justify his claim to be considered the greatest of English architects, must be named St. Paul's Cathedral, the Monument, the Custom House, Temple Bar, Chelsea Hospital, an the following city churches (four and fifty in number) :-

Allhallows the Great, Upper Thames Street, 1683; Allhallows the Great, Bread Street, 1684; Allhallows the Great, Lombard Street, 1694; St. Alban's, Wood Street, 1695; St. Andrew's, Holborn, 1687; St. Andrew's, Blackfriars, 1692; St. Anne and St. Agnes, Aldersgate, 1680; St. Antholin's, Budge Row, 1682; St. Augustine and St. Faith, Watling Street, 1682; St. Bartholomew's, Royal Exchange, 1679; St. Bennet, Gracechurch Street, 1685; St. Bennet and St. Peter, Paul's Wharf, 1683; St. Benet Fink, Threadneedle Street, 1673; St. Bride, Fleet Street, 1680; Christ Church, Newgate Street, 1687; St. Christopher-leStock, 1671; St. Clement Danes, 1682; St. Clement, Eastcheap, 1686; St. Dionis Backchurch, Fenchurch Street, 1674; St. Dunstan-in-the-East, 1668; St. Edmund, Lombard Street, 1690; St. George, Botolph Lane, 1677; St. James, Garlickhithe, 1683; St. James, Westminster, 1683; St. Lawrence Jewry, 1677; St. Magnus, London Bridge, 1676; St. Margaret Pattens, Road Lane, 1687; St. Margaret, Lothbury, 1690; St. Martin, Ludgate, 1684; St. Mary Abchurch, 1686; St. Mary, Aldermanbury, 1677; St. Mary Aldermary, Bow Lane, 1711; St. Mary-leBow, Cheapside, 1673; St. Mary Magdalen, Old Fish Street, 1685; St. Mary Somerset, Thomas Street, 1695; St. Maryat-Hill, Billingsgate, 1672; St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, 1677; St. Matthew, Friday Street, 1685; St. Michael Bassishaw, Basinghall Street, 1679; St. Michael, Queenhithe, 1677; St. Michael, Cornhill, 1672; St. Michael, Crooked

Lane, 1688; St. Michael's, Paternoster Royal, College Hill, 1694; St. Michael, Wood Street, 1675; St. Mildred, Bread Street, 1683; St. Mildred, Poultry, 1676; St. Nicholas Cold Abbey, 1677; St. Olave, Old Jewry, 1676; St. Peter, Cornhill, 1681; St. Sepulchre, Snow Hill, 1674; St. Stephen's, Walbrook, 1676; St. Stephen, Coleman Street, 1676; St. Swithin, Cannon Street, 1679; St. Vedast, Foster Lane, Old Fish Street, 1678.

66

The Story of the South Sea Bubble.

READER," says Charles Lamb, in one of his Essays, "in thy passage from the Bank, where thou hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art a lean annuitant like myself), to the Flower Pot,* to secure a place for Dalston or Shacklewell, or some other thy suburban retreat northerly, didst thou never observe a melancholy-looking, handsome brick and stone edifice, to the left, where Threadneedle Street abuts upon Bishopsgate? I dare say thou hast often admired its magnificent portals, ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave court, with cloisters and pillars, with few or no traces of goers-in or comers-out, a desolation something like Balclutha's.† was once a house of trade, a centre of busy interests. The throng of merchants was here, the quick pulse of gain, and here some forms of business are still kept up, though the soul be long since fled. There are still to be seen stately porticoes, imposing staircases, offices roomy as the state apartments in palaces, deserted or thinly peopled with a few straggling clerks; the still more sacred interiors of

This

* The Flower Pot, in Bishopsgate Street, was the well-known inn from which started the suburban coaches for the north-eastern suburbs of London.

† Ossian sings, "I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate."