rible visitation at the time, and occasioned great loss and
suffering to the two hundred thousand burnt-out people, who were obliged
to lie in the fields under the open night sky, or in hastily-made huts of
mud and straw, while the lanes and roads were rendered impassable by
carts which had broken down as they tried to save their goods. But the
Fire was a great blessing to the City afterwards, for it arose from its
ruins very much improved--built more regularly, more widely, more cleanly
and carefully, and therefore much more healthily. It might be far more
healthy than it is, but there are some people in it still--even now, at
this time, nearly two hundred years later--so selfish, so pig-headed, and
so ignorant, that I doubt if even another Great Fire would warm them up
to do their duty.

The Catholics were accused of having wilfully set London in flames; one
poor Frenchman, who had been mad for years, even accused himself of
having with his own hand fired the first house. There is no reasonable
doubt, however, that the fire was accidental. An inscription on the
Monument long attributed it to the Catholics; but it is removed now, and
was always a malicious and stupid untruth.

SECOND PART

That the Merry Monarch might be very merry indeed, in the merry times
when his people were suffering under pestilence and fire, he drank and
gambled and flung away among his favourites the money which the
Parliament had voted for the war. The consequence of this was that the
stout-hearted English sailors were merrily starving of want, and dying in
the streets; while the Dutch, under their admirals DE WITT and DE RUYTER,
came into the River Thames, and up the River Medway as far as Upnor,
burned the guard-ships, silenced the weak batteries, and did what they
would to the English coast for six whole weeks. Most of the English
ships that could have prevented them had neither powder nor shot on
board; in this merry reign, public officers made themselves as merry as
the King did with the public money; and when it was entrusted to them to
spend in national defences or preparations, they put it into their own
pockets with the merriest grace in the world.

Lord Clarendon had, by this time, run as long a course as is usually
allotted to the unscrupulous ministers of bad kings. He was impeached by
his political opponents, but unsuccessfully. The King then commanded him
to withdraw from England and retire to France, which he di