This appalling calamity is without parallel in history except, perhaps, the earthquake of Lisbon. Once before there had been a fire which swept London from east to west, but London was then poor; there were few merchants, and the warehouses were small and only half-filled. In 1665 the warehouses were vast and filled with valuable merchandise. There still stands south of Thames Street a warehouse[9] built immediately after the Fire, evidently in imitation of its predecessors. It consists of seven or eight stories, all low; there are still small gables, a reminiscence of the old gables; looking upon this warehouse and remembering that there was a long row of these facing the river with lanes and river stairs between, we can understand the loss to the merchants caused by the conflagration. Considering also the rows of shops along Cheapside, Eastcheap, Ludgate Hill, and Cornhill, we can understand the ruin that fell upon the retail dealers in that awful week. All they had in the world was gone save the right of rebuilding on the former site. The master craftsmen lost their tools and their workshops; the bookseller lost his books; the journeyman lost his employment as well as his sticks. I quote here certain words of my own in another book:— “The fire is out at last; the rain has quenched the last sparks; the embers have ceased to smoke; those walls which have not fallen totter and hang trembling, ready to fall. I see men standing about singly; the tears run down their cheeks; two hundred years ago, if we had anything to cry about, we were not ashamed to cry without restraint; they are dressed in broad-cloth, the ruffles are of lace, they look like reputable citizens. Listen—one draws near another. ‘Neighbour,’ he says, ‘a fortnight ago, before this stroke, whether of God or of Papist, I had a fair shop on this spot.’ ‘And I also, good friend,’ said the other, ‘as you know.’ ‘My shop,’ continued the first, ‘was stocked with silks and satins, kid gloves, lace ruffles and neckties, shirts, and all that a gentleman or gentlewoman can ask for. The stock was worth a thousand pounds. I turned it over six or seven times a year at least. And my profit was four hundred pounds.’ ‘As for me,’ said the other, ‘I was in a smaller way, as you know. Yet such as it was, my fortune was all in it, and out of my takings, I could call two hundred pounds a year my own.’ ‘Now is it all gone,’ said the first. ‘All gone,’ the other repeated, fetching a sigh. ‘And now, neighbour, unless the Company help, I see nothing for it but we must starve.’ ‘Must starve,’ the other repeated. And so they separated, and went divers ways, and whether they starved or whether they received help, and rose from the ashes with new house and newly stocked shop, I know not.” [Illustration: _The CATHEDRAL CHURCH of S^t PAUL as it was before y^e fire of LONDON_ From a contemporary print.]