[Illustration: OLD EAST INDIA HOUSE] On Wednesday he walked into the town over the hot ashes. Fenchurch Street, Gracechurch Street, Lombard Street, Cheapside, he found in dust. Of the Exchange nothing standing of all the statues but that of Sir Thomas Gresham--a strange survival. On Saturday he went to see the ruins of St. Paul's: "A miserable sight; all the roofs fallen, and the body of the Quire fallen into St. Faith's; Paul's school, also Ludgate and Fleet Street." The fire was stayed at length by blowing up houses at the Temple Church, at Pie Corner, Smithfield (where the figure of a boy still stands to commemorate the fact), at Aldersgate, Cripplegate, and the upper part of Bishopsgate Street. It had consumed five-sixths of the City, together with a great piece beyond the western gates. It had covered an area of 436 acres, viz., 387 acres within the walls, and 73 without; it had destroyed 132,000 dwelling-houses, St. Paul's Cathedral, eighty-nine parish churches, four of the City gates, Sion College, the Royal Exchange, the old Grey Friars Church, the Chapel of St. Thomas of Acon, and an immense number of great houses, schools, prisons, and hospitals. The area covered, roughly speaking, an oblong nearly a mile and a half in length by half a mile in breadth. The value of the property destroyed was estimated at £10,000,000. There is no such fire of any great city on record, unless it is the burning of Rome under Nero. [Illustration: SION COLLEGE] Their city being thus destroyed, the citizens lost no time, but set to work manfully to rebuild it. The rebuilding of London is a subject of some obscurity. One thing is quite certain: that as soon as the embers were cool enough to enable the people to walk among them, they returned, and began to find out the sites of their former houses. It is also certain that it took more than two years to clear away the tottering walls and the ruins.