The prejudices of the times assigned different causes for this tragical event, according to the political principles of the discordant parties. Most agreed, that the fire was raised by design; for, although the multitude are content to allow, that a private person may die suddenly of a natural disorder, or that a cottage may be consumed by accidental fire; yet the death of a king, or the conflagration of a metropolis, must, according to their habits of thinking, arise from some dark and dismal plot, planned, doubtless, by those, whose religious or political sentiments are most remote from their own. The royalists accused the fanatics; the puritans the papists, of being the raisers of this dreadful fire. Some suspected even the king and duke of York; though it is somewhat difficult to see any advantage they could derive from burning a city, which had been just loading them both with treasures. The Monument, whose inscription adopts one of these rash opinions, is a more stately, but not a more respectable, record of prejudice, than the stone figure in Smithfield, whose tablet declares, the fire must have been specially and exclusively a judgment for the crime of GLUTTONY, since it began in _Pudding-Lane_, and ended in _Pye-Corner_! An event so signally calamitous called forth, as may be readily supposed, the condolence and consolations, such as they were, of the poets of the day. One author, who designs himself J. A. Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, poured forth verses "Upon the late lamentable Fire in London, in an humble imitation of the most incomparable Mr Cowley his Pindaric strain." This usurper of the Theban lyre informs us, that About those hours which silence keep. To tempt the froward world to ease; Just at the time when, clothed with subtile air. Guilty spirits use to appear; When the hard students to their pillows creep; (All but the aged men that wake, Who in the morn their slumbers take,) When fires themselves are put to sleep, (Only the thrifty lights that burn, and melancholy persons please;) Just then a message came, Brought by a murmuring wind; (Not to every obvious flame, Thousand of those it left behind.) And chose a treacherous heap of sparks, Which buried in their ashes lay; Which, when discovered by some secret marks, The air fan'd the pale dust away: What less than Heaven could ere this message send? The embers glowing, waked, and did attend.