There was great ruin in Prince William Street after the fire. A good deal of the wealth of the city, and some of the chief buildings of the place were situate here. The destruction of the Imperial Building belonging to the Messrs. Magee, and which was occupied by them and Messrs. Maclellan & Co., the bankers, was but the work of a few moments. A large quantity of valuable merchandise likewise perished, and the newly commenced block of buildings adjoining exhibited even a vaster extent of ruin than it did on the night of the last great fire which raged in this locality, and which cost the city seven lives.[P] Mr. Robert Marshall's insurance office, on the corner of the Market Square, and indeed the whole of Prince William Street, both sides clear to Reed's Point, were reduced to ashes and debris. Jardine's grocery store, Messrs. Wisdom & Fish's belting and heavy goods establishment, Benson's millinery store, Steeves, Bros., J. & J. Hegan & Co's., Beard & Venning, The Devebers, James R. Cameron & Co., W. H. Hayward & Co., George Philp's banking house, and Chubb's book store on the one side, were as completely wrecked as the row of stores on the eastern part of the street which contained Barnes & Co's. book-store, Peiler's piano warehouse, and Professor Devine's music store, the splendid book and publishing establishment of Messrs. J. & A. McMillan, which was first built in 1831, and was afterwards burned in one of the great fires which succeeded that year, and, about 1842, was rebuilt in the shape in which the fire found it the other day, the insurances offices of H. R. Ranney, Lawton's drug store, Stevenson's shoe-shop, Valpey's, Sheraton & Skinner's carpet warehouse, Simeon Jones & Co's., Eastern Express, Francis', and Z. G. Gabel's corner store.