s were strew'd with moveables of all sorts,
and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get
away. Oh the miserable and calamitous spectacle! such as happly the
world had not seene since the foundation of it, nor be outdon till the
universal conflagration thereof. All the skie was of a fiery aspect,
like the top of a burning oven, and the light seene above 40 miles round
about for many nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold the like,
who now saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking
and thunder of the impetuous flames, ye shreiking of women and children,
the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like
an hideous storme, and the aire all about so hot and inflam'd that at
the last one was not able to approach it, so that they were forc'd to
stand and let ye flames burn on, which they did for neere two miles in
lengh and one in breadh. The clowds also of smoke were dismall and
reach'd upon computation neer 50 miles in length. Thus I left it this
afternoone burning, a resemblance of Sodom, or the last day. It forcibly
call'd to my mind that passage--_non enim hic habemus stabilem
civitatem_: the ruines resembling the picture of Troy. London was, but
is no more! Thus I returned.'

For days the conflagration raged, although the whole situation might
probably have been saved if the advice of seamen, then as now amongst
the bravest and most practical of Britain's sons, had been followed.
When the court suburb of Whitehall began to be threatened,--'but oh, the
confusion there was then at the Court!'--the gentlemen, 'who hitherto
had stood as men intoxicated, with their hands acrosse,.... began to
consider that nothing was likely to put a stop but the blowing up of so
many houses as might make a wider gap than any had yet been made by the
ordinary method of pulling them downe with engines; this some stout
seamen propros'd early enough to have sav'd neere ye whole citty, but
this some tenacious and avaritious men, aldermen, etc., would not
permitt, because their houses must have been of the first.' At length,
however, the fire died out, the houseless citizens finding refuge in
tents and miserable huts and hovels hastily erected about St. George's
fields and Moorfields as far as Highgate. But Evelyn's abode had
remained untouched. From reviewing the now poverty-striken people 'in
this calamitous condition I return'd with a sad heart to my house,
blessing an