ed to. Even when the flames attacked the buildings to which the
dovecots were attached, the birds wheeled round and round them, until,
their pinions being scorched by the fire, they dropped into the water.

Leonard remained on the river nearly two hours. He could not, in fact,
tear himself away from the spectacle, which possessed a strange
fascination in his eyes. He began to think that all the efforts of men
were unavailing to arrest the progress of destruction, and he was for
awhile content to regard it as a mere spectacle. And never had he beheld
a more impressive--a more terrible sight. There lay the vast and
populous city before him, which he had once before known to be invaded
by an invisible but extirminating foe, now attacked by a furious and
far-seen enemy. The fire seemed to form a vast arch--many-coloured as a
rainbow,--reflected in the sky, and re-reflected in all its horrible
splendour in the river.

Nor was the aspect of the city less striking. The innumerable towers and
spires of the churches rose tall and dark through the wavering sheet of
flame, and every now and then one of them would topple down or
disappear, as if swallowed up by the devouring element. For a short
space, the fire seemed to observe a regular progressive movement, but
when it fell upon better material, it reared its blazing crest aloft,
changed its hues, and burnt with redoubled intensity. Leonard watched it
thread narrow alleys, and firing every lesser habitation in its course,
kindle some great hall or other structure, whose remoteness seemed to
secure it from immediate danger. At this distance, the roaring of the
flames resembled that of a thousand furnaces. Ever and anon, it was
broken by a sound like thunder, occasioned by the fall of some mighty
edifice. Then there would come a quick succession of reports like the
discharge of artillery, followed by a shower of fiery flakes and sparks
blown aloft, like the explosion of some stupendous firework. Mixed with
the roaring of the flames, the thunder of falling roofs, the cracking of
timber, was a wild hubbub of human voices, that sounded afar off like a
dismal wail. In spite of its terror, the appearance of the fire was at
that time beautiful beyond description. Its varying colours--its
fanciful forms--now shooting out in a hundred different directions, like
lightning-flashes,--now drawing itself up, as it were, and soaring
aloft,--now splitting into a million tongues of flame,--these