The Monument on Fish-street-hill, which was designed by Wren, is about 200 feet high, and stands as many feet distant from the spot where the Fire first commenced on that awful Sunday, September 2, 1666, in Pudding-lane. The ascent is by 345 steps up a spiral staircase, lighted by what we might term, in old castellated architecture, arrow-slits. The interior of the column is nine feet wide. Several persons have committed suicide, by throwing themselves off the Monument; and it is now covered in with a kind of cage-work, to prevent such awful self-destruction. The view from the summit is not to be compared with that from St. Paul's; and we should advise all sight-lovers to ascend the Monument first, on that account, and peep at the "wilderness of shipping," and the thousands of house-roofs that rise in ridging disorder, as if some dark sea had suddenly been struck motionless, and so left silent with all its edged waves. On one side of the base is the following inscription of the destruction caused by the Great Fire, according to the translation of Maitland: "Eighty-nine churches, the city gates, Guildhall (not totally), many public structures, hospitals, schools, libraries; a vast number of stately edifices, 13,500 dwelling-houses, 400 streets; of twenty-six wards it utterly destroyed fifteen, and left eight others shattered and half burnt. The ruins of the city were 436 acres, from the Tower by the Thames side to the Temple Church, and from the north-east gate along the city wall to Holborn-bridge. To the estates and fortunes of the citizens it was merciless, but to their lives very favourable (only eight being lost)." One poet of the period, in be-rhyming the praiseworthy conduct of King Charles at the Great Fire, compares him to Cæsar, coming "with buckets in his eyes." Pepys gives an interesting account of the Great Fire. Dryden also describes it in his _Annus Mirabilis_, commencing at verse 212. CHAPTER IV. THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF BILLINGSGATE, NEW COAL EXCHANGE, AND TOWER OF LONDON.