the portico; while the pulpit and cross were
entirely destroyed. The dragoons in St. Paul's became so troublesome to
the inhabitants by their noisy brawling games and their rough
interruption of passengers, that in 1651 we find them forbidden to play
at ninepins from six a.m. to nine p.m.

[Illustration: DR. BOURNE PREACHING AT PAUL'S CROSS (_see page 243_).]

When the Restoration came, sunshine again fell upon the ruins. Wren,
that great genius, was called in. His report was not very favourable.
The pillars were giving way; the whole work had been from the beginning
ill designed and ill built; the tower was leaning. He proposed to have a
rotunda, with cupola and lantern, to give the church light, "and
incomparable more grace" than the lean shaft of a steeple could possibly
afford. He closed his report by a eulogy on the portico of Inigo Jones,
as "an absolute piece in itself." Some of the stone collected for St.
Paul's went, it is said, to build Lord Clarendon's house (site of
Albemarle Street). On August 27, 1661, good Mr. Evelyn, one of the
commissioners, describes going with Wren, the Bishop and Dean of St.
Paul's, &c., and resolving finally on a new foundation. On Sunday,
September 2, the Great Fire drew a red cancelling line over Wren's
half-drawn plans. The old cathedral passed away, like Elijah, in flames.
The fire broke out about ten o'clock on Saturday night at a bakehouse in
Pudding Lane, near East Smithfield. Sunday afternoon Pepys found all the
goods carried that morning to Cannon Street now removing to Lombard
Street. At St. Paul's Wharf he takes water, follows the king's party,
and lands at Bankside. "In corners and upon steeples, and between
churches and houses, as far as we could see up the city, a most horrid,
bloody, malicious flame, not like the flame of an ordinary fire." On the
7th, he saw St. Paul's Church with all the roof off, and the body of the
quire fallen into St. Faith's.

On Monday, the 3rd, Mr. Evelyn describes the whole north of the City on
fire, the sky light for ten miles round, and the scaffolds round St.
Paul's catching. On the 4th he saw the stones of St. Paul's flying like
grenades, the melting lead running in streams down the streets, the very
pavements too hot for the feet, and the approaches too blocked for any
help to be applied. A Westminster boy named Taswell (quoted by Dean
Milman from "Camden's Miscellany," vol. ii., p. 12) has also sketched
the scene. On Monday, the 3rd,