beneath, which the stationers had filled with their countless books was crushed and destroyed. This catastrophe is the culminating point of the calamity. The record goes on to tell the names of the streets which, one after another, fell a prey. By Tuesday night nearly the whole of the city was consumed, and even the people in the suburbs were in full flight. Baynard's Castle, so famous for its associations with Richard Crookback, the Old Bailey, Guildhall, had all fallen. "I wrote to my father this night," said Sam Pepys, "but the post-office being burned, my letter could not go. I lay down, being mighty weary and sore in my feet with going till I was hardly able to stand."

Wednesday morning found the fire advanced as far as the Temple on one side, and the Tower on the other. But the wind had suddenly hushed and the streets were less narrow and close. It is said that the Duke of York arranged the blowing-up of the houses with gunpowder between the fire and the unscathed streets. At all events, it was done, and now the spread of the conflagration ceased. "It is a strange thing," says Pepys, "to see how long this time did look since Sunday, having been always full of variety of actions and little sleep, that it looked like a week or more, and I had forgot the days of the week." Four days after, says Clarendon, people who had buried papers and linen in vaults came to look for them, and on their being opened to the air they caught fire. Others, learning wisdom thereby, waited till rain fell and the air was cooled.

The fire reached two miles in length and one in breadth. Pye Corner, the last place burnt, was in Smithfield. The conjunction of this name with Pudding Lane was a conclusive proof to improvers of the occasion that the visitation was intended as a judgment upon gluttony. A statue of a fat boy, with an inscription stating so much, was set up in Pye Corner. What became of it we know not. The flames

consumed 13,200 houses, 89 churches, and £11,000,000 worth of property. Only six lives were lost. The church registers and plate seem to have been mostly saved; at least, we have seen several belonging to destroyed churches, amongst which let not the books of All Hallows, Bread Street, be forgotten, containing as they do the baptismal register of "John Mylton."

It is pleasant to find one case where the courtly praises of Dryden seem to have been deserved. All accounts agree in extolling the vigour and wisdom of Charles II. and his brother, and therefore we may probably take the "Annus Mirabilis" as containing a trustworthy narrative of the Great Fire of London. Let it not be forgotten, too, that when the king ordered a fast throughout England, and a collection for the 200,000 homeless people, not only did our people respond nobly, but the generous Irish gave alms of such things as they had, and sent 30,000 fat

oxen.

The Act of Parliament for rebuilding the City was drawn up by Sir Matthew Hale. Sir Christopher Wren drew up a magnificent plan for the rebuilding, but it was rejected. "There were a thousand difficulties in respect to the division of property; there was in a vast commercial city like London a hurry to resume their former occupations, and a prejudice for ancient sites. It was difficult to persuade people to relinquish for a mere work of taste, a spot productive of thousands. It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that we are left to admire on paper only the vast designs of our great architect" (Pennant). There is a mixture of good and evil here; amongst the latter is that love of vested interests which produces Bumbledom in all its branches, and cholera occasionally among our poor brethren. However, much good was done by better buildings with a better arrangement, "instead of very narrow, crooked, and incommodious streets; dark, irregular, and ill-contrived wooden houses, with their several stories jutting out, or hang

ing over each other, whereby the circulation of the air was obstructed, noisome vapours harboured, and verminous pestilential atoms nourished."

DEATH'S FINAL CONQUEST.

SHIRLEY.

of our birth and state

THE gloriedows, not substantial things;

There is no armour against fate :
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and crown

Must tumble down,

And in the dust be equal made

With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

Some men with swords may reap the field,
And plant fresh laurels where they kill;
But their strong nerves at last must yield:
They tame but one another still.

Early or late

They stoop to fate,

And must give up their murmuring breath,
When they, pale captives, creep to death.

The garlands wither on your brow,

Then boast no more your mighty deeds:

Upon Death's purple altar now

See where the victor victim bleeds:

All heads must come

To the cold tomb;

Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.

AT

SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON.

DR. A. WYNTER.

T the most active corner of the most active lung of the great metropolis stands a large building, more remarkable for its size than its classic beauty. Its vast monotonous white flank, exposed to the full roar of Piccadilly, gives no sign of life or animation ; and if it were not for the inscription on its frieze,— "Supported by Voluntary Contributions,”—it might be taken for a workhouse, or for one of Nash's palaces. Will the reader be conducted through the labyrinths of Saint George's Hospital, and see something of the eternal fight that every day beholds between the good Saint George and the undying Dragon of Disease?

But let him not enter with the idea that there is anything repulsive in the contemplation of this congregation of human sufferers; but rather with a sense of the beneficence of an institution which snatches poor helpless creatures from the depressing influences of noisome alleys, or the fever-jungles of pestilential courts, and opens to them here-in the free air, where a palace might be proud to plant itself a home, with Benevolence and Charity as their friends and servitors. Neither must he look with a half-averted glance upon the scenes we have to show him; for their aim is to render the anguish of one sufferer subservient to the future ease of some succeeding sufferer; to make great Death himself pay tribute to the living.

As we enter and proceed into the fine vestibule, a crowd of students are seen hanging about the boardroom door. It is one o'clock, and "High Change at the hospital. Dotted about, among the living mass, are some who carry little wooden trays filled with lint and surgical instruments. These are 66 dressers," waiting for the surgeons to make their daily round of

the wards. Others have long green books tucked under their arms: these are the clerks of the physicians, whose duty it is to post up, day by day, the progress of the patients, until“ dead” or recovered" closes the account. They are all looking into the board-room, and expecting the advent of the big medicine-men. The younger men regard this room with awe; for to them it is a sealed book; and they wonder if the time will ever come when they will lounge carelessly in and out of it, or have their portraits hung upon the walls, or their busts placed upon brackets.

Now, the board-room door opens: a surgeon comes out, wheels to the right, strides down the passage, and off goes one of the trays and a broil of students. A physician follows, and turns to the left with him flies a green book and another ring of satellites. Surgeons and physicians follow, one after another, each taking up his little crowd of followers, green books, and trays; and the noisy vestibule is at once deserted. Let us follow the last batch up the stairs.

At the end of See how she has

This is a physician's ward. At this hour all the patients are in bed to await their doctor's visit. The cluster of students follow the physician, and settle for a few minutes here and there upon particular beds, as they proceed down the long vista of sufferers. The patients are quiet enough while the physicians are present; but we will just look in half an hour hence, and see what a change there will be. each ward is a room for the nurse. contrived to make it look like home;-the bit of carpet, the canary, the pictures round the walls, all express an individuality strongly in contrast with the bare monotonous aspect of the open ward. Meanwhile the swarm of black bees is pitching upon a distant bed. Before we can reach it, however, a little bell rings, and all the patients' eyes turn towards a particular part of the wall. There we see a large dial,