and that, although they would not find their property
exactly on the same site, every building would be replaced, with the
immense compensation of an excellent situation in the finest and
healthiest city in the whole world. By this plan St. Paul's would have
directly faced a long and broad street running west and passing
through the present Law Courts, with St. Dunstan's Church in the
centre beyond the Fleet, and the narrow Strand joining from the west
at Temple Bar. At Ludgate, three hundred yards west of the cathedral,
this avenue of a width of some thirty yards began to open out until,
opposite the west front, it had increased to a breadth of a hundred
yards, leaving ample room for a piazza. Here an acute bifurcation was
formed, the northern street leading to the Exchange; the southern, a
broader and a nobler Cannon Street, with St. Paul's between. This
scheme, as laid before the King and Parliament, Wren declared to be
thoroughly practicable. Certainly it would have prevented congestion
of traffic unto this day, and given St. Paul's (although somewhat
hemmed in on the east) a position unique amongst churches.[57] "The
only and as it happened unsurmountable Difficulty remaining was the
obstinate Averseness of great Part of the Citizens to alter their old
Properties, and to secede from building their Houses again on the old
Ground and Foundations"; and as rebuilding began almost as soon as the
smoke of the Fire had ceased, and long before anything definite could
be decided upon, a great opportunity was lost. The estimated
three-quarters of a million of souls and the vehicles innumerable now
crossing the boundaries every weekday are compelled, too often, to
traverse choked and narrow streets, and not without danger to life and
limb; while St. Paul's itself, cribbed, cabined, confined, becomes in
each successive generation more hemmed in as the surrounding emporiums
and magazines grow taller and taller.

At first the idea was entertained of restoring the ruins, but this was
finally abandoned by royal warrant to the Commissioners in 1668, and
clearing and excavations began. The workmen with pickaxes stood on the
top of the walls some eighty feet high, and others below cleared away
the dislodged stones--a dangerous task in which lives were lost. Of
the Central Tower some two hundred feet remained, and a more
expeditious plan was adopted. A deal box, containing eighteen pounds
of gunpowder, was exploded level with the fou