“Oh! It was Sir Christopher Wren who built the new St. Paul’s, wasn’t it?” “Yes, and many of the other London churches we see every day. After the Great Fire, when most of the city was in ruins, it was at first proposed to rebuild it in an altogether different way, and Sir Christopher Wren was asked to prepare a plan for New London. If it had been built according to his drawing, we should see a very different London now. It would be a _regular_ city, with broad streets all more or less similar, running parallel to one another; rather like modern Paris or New York.” “But it isn’t a bit like that, is it? There are lots of little curly streets and narrow lanes in the city in our own time,” said Betty. “That’s because the people couldn’t wait to build till all these new arrangements were settled. They began putting up their new houses in the same places, following the lines of the old streets.” “I’m so glad they did,” Betty remarked. “Because at least you can tell now exactly where the old places stood. It wouldn’t have been interesting to have a perfectly different city.” “Well, it has stopped raining now,” said Godmother as a gleam of sunshine lighted her pretty parlour. “Shall we go to Whitehall and look at the only part of the Palace that is left?” “Oh yes. I want to hear what happened to it after Charles the Second’s time. It wasn’t burnt, of course, because the Great Fire didn’t reach so far as Whitehall.” “Not in the Great Fire certainly, but it _was_ burnt down only about thirty years later, in the reign of William and Mary. Afterwards St. James’s Palace, which you know well by sight, was the London home of royalty till Buckingham Palace took its place.” In less than half an hour, they were driving from Westminster up Whitehall, and the car stopped before that building opposite the Horse Guards which is now called the United Service Museum. “The famous Banqueting Hall has been turned into a museum, you see, where all sorts of interesting relics connected with the Army and Navy are preserved. We’ll go in and look at it,” said Godmother. They went upstairs into the lofty hall, and Betty gazed up at the painted ceiling high above her head and at the flags hanging in a line just below it. “The ceiling is the work of Rubens, a famous Dutch painter, and the old flags hanging up there once belonged either to famous ships or famous regiments. Now come and look at this model of Whitehall Palace as you saw it half an hour ago.” Betty followed her eagerly to a glass case near the door. “Oh, it’s a splendid model of it!” she exclaimed. “Here’s the part that went along by the river, where the Queen lived, and some of the beautiful ladies of the Court as well. And there are all the gabled houses round the big garden in the middle.”