how little some are concerned in this sad calamity. My hearty service to my sister and nephew, Sir Robert: my father writt a letter this week to you, but no post went, and I cannot come at ye letter. My mother has had a great loss in her house by Ludgate—for what service I can perform pray command me. My paper bids me end. Our navy is come into St. Helen’s Bay.—I am your ever loving brother, most ready to serve you, EDW. ATKYNS.” The following account is from Dean Milman’s _Annals of St. Paul’s_. “A certain Doctor Taswell remembered well the awful event, for it happened between his election and admission as a king’s scholar at Westminster. It was likely to be graven deeply on the memory of a boy. ‘On Sunday between ten and eleven, just as I was standing upon the steps leading up to the pulpit in Westminster Abbey, I discovered some people below me, running to and fro in a seeming inquietude and consternation; immediately almost a report reached my ears that London was in a conflagration. Without any ceremony I took leave of the preacher, and having ascended the Parliament steps near the Thames, I soon perceived four boats crowded with objects of distress. These had escaped from the fire scarce under any covering but that of a blanket.’ The next day (Monday) Dolben, then Dean of Westminster, set gallantly forth at the head of the Westminster boys (the Dean, by Taswell’s account, had frequently in the civil wars mounted guard as sentinel) to do what they could to render assistance in staying the fire. They went a long way, for they aided in saving the Church of St. Dunstan in the East by fetching water from the back sides of the building, and so extinguishing the fire. Taswell acted as a sort of aide-de-camp page to the Dean. During this expedition Taswell may have heard or seen what he relates about St. Paul’s. ‘The people who lived contiguous to St. Paul’s Church raised their expectations greatly concerning the absolute security of that place upon account of the immense thickness of its walls and its situation, built on a large piece of ground on every side remote from houses.’ Upon that account they filled it with all sorts of goods; and besides, in the Church of St. Faith, under that of St. Paul, they deposited libraries of books, because it was entirely arched over; and with great caution and prudence even the least avenue, through which the smallest spark could penetrate, was stopped up. ‘But,’ Taswell proceeds, ‘this precaution availed them little. As I stood upon the bridge (a small one over a creek at the foot of what is now Westminster Bridge), among many others, I could not but observe the progress of the fire towards that venerable fabric. About eight o’clock it broke out on the top of St. Paul’s Church, almost scorched up by the violent heat of the air and lightning too, and before nine blazed so conspicuously as to enable me to read very clearly a 16mo. edition