ined jewels of immense value.

Not half an hour after this, the flames poured upon Lombard-street from
the four avenues before mentioned, and the whole neighbourhood was on
fire. With inconceivable rapidity, they then ran up Birchin-lane, and
reaching Cornhill, spread to the right and left in that great
thoroughfare. The conflagration had now reached the highest point of the
city, and presented the grandest and most terrific aspect it had yet
assumed from the river. Thus viewed, it appeared, as Pepys describes it,
"as an entire arch of fire from the Three Cranes to the other side of
the bridge, and in a bow up the hill, for an arch of above a mile long:
_it made me weep to see it_." Vincent also likens its appearance at this
juncture to that of a bow. "A dreadful bow it was," writes this eloquent
nonconformist preacher, "such as mine eyes have never before seen; a bow
which had God's arrow in it with a flaming point; a shining bow, not
like that in the cloud which brings water with it, and withal signifieth
God's covenant not to destroy the world any more with water, but a bow
having fire in it, and signifying God's anger, and his intention to
destroy London with fire."

As the day drew to a close, and it became darker, the spectacle
increased in terror and sublimity. The tall black towers of the churches
assumed ghastly forms, and to some eyes appeared like infernal spirits
plunging in a lake of flame, while even to the most reckless the
conflagration seemed to present a picture of the terrors of the Last
Day. Never before had such a night as that which ensued fallen upon
London. None of its inhabitants thought of retiring to rest, or if they
sought repose after the excessive fatigue they had undergone, it was
only in such manner as would best enable them to rise and renew their
exertions to check the flames, which were continued throughout the
night, but wholly without success. The conflagration appeared to proceed
at the same appalling rapidity. Halls, towers, churches, public and
private buildings, were burning to the number of more than ten thousand,
while clouds of smoke covered the vast expanse of more than fifty miles.
Travellers approaching London from the north-east were enveloped in it
ten miles off, and the fiery reflection in the sky could be discerned at
an equal distance. The "hideous storm," as Evelyn terms the fearful and
astounding noise produced by the roaring of the flames and the falling
of the nu