On Monday the Royal Exchange perished in the sea of flame. By evening Cheapside had fallen, and beside the water's edge it was blazing in Fleet Street; while it had also burned backward, even against the wind, along the eastern part of Thames Street, toward Tower Hill. The heat was so terrible that persons could not approach within a furlong, while the very pathways were glowing with fiery heat. Some persons chartered barges and boats, and, filling them with such property as they could save, sent them down the Thames. Others paid large sums for carts to convey property far beyond the city walls. A piteous exodus of sick and sound, aged and young, crawled or fled to the spacious fields beyond the gates. The ground was strewn with movables for miles, and tents were erected to shelter the burned-out multitude.

At length St. Paul's succumbed. It had stood tall and strong in the space of its churchyard, lifting its head loftily amid th. . . Read More