“Oh, Godmother, the beautiful Chepe! All in ruins!” cried Betty. A moment later she saw what had been the Exchange, and was now nothing but a blackened skeleton. Mr. Pepys was standing before its remains, looking from the heaps of broken statues on the ground to one still standing, upon which he gazed in astonishment. “It’s the statue of its founder, Sir Thomas Gresham—the only one on the building not burnt, strangely enough,” Godmother said. “Oh! that’s St. Paul’s; with the roof all fallen in. Scarcely any of it left,” Betty exclaimed sorrowfully. “_A miserable sight, my Lord!_” she heard Mr. Pepys remark with a low bow to a gentleman who stood near him among the crowd of dejected sightseers. “The old Grey Friars’ church is gone, you notice,” Godmother said. “This, you remember, was Christ’s Hospital—the Blue Coat School, now all in ruins. Acres of streets and houses are destroyed, with more than eighty churches and an enormous number of schools and hospitals and public buildings of all sorts. In fact, old London, as you see, has practically vanished.” “It’s too sad,” sighed Betty, looking round her at the ruin and desolation. “I don’t want to see any more. Look at those people crying. I suppose that heap of rubbish was their home?... Do let us go back to our own time, Godmother!” In another flash they were there, and Betty, as usual when she returned so mysteriously to everyday life, rubbed her eyes. “Poor London!” she sighed. “First the Plague, and then that awful Fire. I should think it was the worst fire that ever happened to a city, wasn’t it?” “One of the worst, certainly. But out of the evil came one good at least. London has never since been visited by that dreadful Plague which before the Fire was always hovering in its narrow lanes ready to break out violently at intervals. In sweeping away the picturesque buildings, many of which had been standing for hundreds of years, it also swept the city free of the poisonous germs in it, which had never before died out. The new houses were healthier, many of the streets were made broader. There was air and light where formerly there had been stuffy darkness. And light and air are the good spirits that drive away the demons of disease.” “But how did London ever get built again? I can’t think how ever the people found homes once more?” “There was terrible suffering, of course, but they were brave and energetic. They did not sit down and cry for long, but helped by money from the rich, they began to build their city again. The part by the riverside that was needed for shipping and trade of all kinds, rose first out of the ashes, and then by degrees new churches and mansions, and public buildings arose on the ruins of the old. You must remember one man in particular who lived at this time, because it was he who designed most of the new churches and a great many of the public buildings. His name was Sir Christopher Wren.”