Half an hour later they were passing the Monument at the entrance to the Bridge, and this time Betty looked up at it with greater interest than ever. “That marks the place where the Fire began,” she murmured. “How soon afterwards was it built, Godmother?” “About eight years afterwards. Sir Christopher Wren designed it. He, as I hope you remember, was the great architect who practically rebuilt London. At least so far as great public buildings are concerned. We’ll get out now, and walk to the middle of the bridge.” “The last time I saw it ‘magically’ the funny pretty houses on it were burning!” Betty said. “I do wish this was the very same bridge,” she added with a sigh. “Well, at least it’s almost, though not quite in the same _place_ as the one you stood on with Chaucer, and that’s something, isn’t it? But now look right and left, and remembering the London you saw burning, tell me what changes you notice in the _kind_ of buildings you see now. There’s the new St. Paul’s, for instance, and you remember the old one?” “It’s quite a different sort of church now,” Betty said. “Old St. Paul’s had a spire and pointed roofs and arches instead of that big dome with the ball and cross on the top. All the churches now are different,” she went on, looking from one white steeple to another rising above the houses. “Yes. You see, don’t you?—that the _architecture_ of London,—that is, the way a building is made—has changed completely. Before the Fire, the churches and most of the other important buildings, were in a style we call Gothic. They had pointed arches, like Westminster Abbey, and if you keep the appearance of the Abbey in mind, you will have a good idea of what Gothic architecture means. See how very different is this new St. Paul’s! It has a dome. In front of it runs a line of pillars supporting a sort of stone triangle. Look at the gallery of columns upon which the dome rests. It is all as different as it can be, from the architecture of the Abbey. Now for the sort of architecture of which the new St. Paul’s is an example, the architects took the ancient Greek temples for their models. Nearly all the architects who lived later than Elizabeth’s time, built in this way, and Christopher Wren and Inigo Jones (who designed the Whitehall Banqueting House, you remember) were two of the men of the seventeenth century who planned their buildings on Grecian models. Now as Wren designed most of the important buildings, we may expect to find London architecture after the Fire, for the most part in this new style. It is called the _classical_ style, and the new St. Paul’s is a good example of it.” “But all the crowded houses and quays and bridges that we see now weren’t here till much later even, than George the Second’s time, were they?”