iers not to play
nine-pins and other games there between nine o'clock at night and six
in the morning, because their noise and shouts while they played
greatly disturbed the people who lived near the churchyard. Long
before this the great steeple had been struck by lightning and burnt
down, and the whole Cathedral had fallen out of repair; thus, when
Cromwell died and Charles II. became King, there was much talk as to
what was to be done for it.

[Illustration: OLD ST. PAUL'S. Burnt down in 1666.]

The summer of the year 1666--the year after the Great Plague--was very
hot; an east wind blew for weeks together, so the old crowded wooden
houses of the City must have been as dry as tinder, when, on September
2, a fire broke out in a baker's shop in Pudding Lane. At first, I
suppose, the neighbours watched it and thought it just such a fire as
they had {61} seen many a time before; but how could they have felt
when it spread from house to house, and leapt from street to street?
when days passed and still it spread? Some people ran about like
distracted creatures, not even trying to save their possessions; others
fled away to the fields outside the City, carrying with them all they
could. Imagine them huddling under the hedges for shelter and looking
back at the crimson sky, for an old writer tell us "all the sky was of
a fiery aspect like the top of a burning oven, and the light" was "seen
above forty miles round about for many nights." The melting lead of
the roof of St. Paul's ran "down the streets in a stream, and the {62}
very pavements were glowing with a fiery redness, so as no horse or man
was able to tread on them."

Five days the fire raged. When at last it died out, London lay in
ruins; 400 streets, 89 churches and 4 of the city-gates had been burnt,
besides the Cathedral, and in it the shrine of St. Erkenwald. Has any
city, I wonder, ever suffered so great a loss? Were the Londoners sad
and miserable when they looked at the ruins? For a time, perhaps, they
were; but soon they set themselves to build a new London with wider
streets and houses made of stone, which would not burn so easily; and
the man who advised and helped them most to do this was Sir Christopher
Wren. He drew the plans for, and saw to the rebuilding of, many of the
city churches, and above all of the Cathedral. Look again at its
picture facing page 57. The first of its stones was laid in June,
1675, and the last and highest in 171