The court, however, for that matter, was as frightened
as the city, with the exception of the King and one or two others; so
terrible is a new face of danger, unless there is some peculiar reason for
meeting it. The sight indeed of the interior of the burning city, was more
perilous, though not so awful, as its appearance outside. Many streets
consisted of nothing but avenues between heaps of roaring ruins; the sound
of the fire being nothing less than that of hundreds of furnaces, mixed up
with splittings, rattlings, and thunderous falls; and the flame blowing
frightfully one way, with a wind like a tempest. The pavement was hot
under one's feet; and if you did not proceed with caution, the fire singed
your hair. All the water that could be got seemed like a ridiculous
dabbling in a basin, while the world was burning around you. The blowing
up of the houses marked out by the King, was the ultimate salvation of
some of the streets that remained; but as a whole, the city might be
looked upon as destroyed. I observed the King, as he sat on his horse at
the beginning of Cheapside, and cast his eyes up that noble thoroughfare;
and certainly I had never seen such an expression in his countenance
before.
"The fire raged four days and nights; and on the fifth of September,
London, from the Tower to Fleet-street, was as if a volcano had burst in
the midst of it, and destroyed it, the very ruins being calcined, and
nothing remaining in the most populous part, to show the inhabitants where
they had lived, except a church here and there, or an old statue.
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