Mr. Norville, the hatter, Mr. Leggett, the print seller, and a dozen other small shopkeepers who were wont to stand in their doorways in the morning and greet each other across Cornhill, had to get their families into safety as best they could. Speed was necessary, for the great tower of the second Royal Exchange, never a satisfactory feature of the building--since already it had had once to be replaced--threatened to fall across the street and crush the houses opposite. A good many of these inhabitants found refuge in the Rectory of St. Michaels, while the valuable contents of the shops were safely stored in the Church. It seems as if some freakish spirit of humour lurked about the burning edifice, for while the tower was yet tottering, the bells started playing “There is nae luck about the house,” and then fell with a crash into the flames below. The destruction was almost complete. A few relics testified by their paucity to the completeness of the disaster. Amongst them we must not count those statues of the Kings of England which were said to have fallen down on their faces during the first fire leaving the statue of Sir Thomas Gresham alone proudly erect. The Grinling Gibbons figure of Charles the Second as a Roman Emperor, which, as we have seen, held the post of honour in the middle of the Quadrangle, was saved with the Bushnill figures on the right and left of the Portico in Cornhill, and strangely enough, the great gilt grasshopper, which if report speaks truly, not only rode on high above the second Royal Exchange, but even above the original building of Sir Thomas Gresham. The work of restoration was quickly taken in hand by the Mercers’ Company and the City Corporation, and before the decade was out the Third Royal Exchange was opened by Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort.