I did not enter the House of Lords, which was now one mass of glowing fire, but directed my attention towards the Speaker’s mansion, which was partially burning. The garden behind was nearly filled with miscellaneous property--and numbers of well-dressed gentlemen were every moment rushing into the house, from which they issued again, laden with spits, sauce-pans, and other culinary implements. I, myself, saw one zealous individual thus encumbered--with a stew-pan on his head, the meat-screen under one arm, the dripping-pan under the other, the frying-pan in his right hand, the grid-iron in his left, and the rolling-pin in his mouth. Indeed, it is said that every article in the kitchen was saved down to the salt-box; and the cook declares that such was the anxiety to save her she was “cotched up in twelve gentlemen’s arms, and never felt her feet till the corner of Abingdon Street.” The whole of the Foot Guards were in attendance, as well as a great number of the police, but the thieves had mustered in great force, and there was a good deal of plundering, which was however checked temporarily by a gentleman said to be one of the members and magistrates for Essex, who jumped up on a railing and addressed the populace to the following effect, “How do you hall dare!” The origin of the fire is involved in much mystery; nor is it correctly ascertained by whom it was first discovered. Some say that one of the serjeants, in taking up the insignia, was astonished to find the mace as hot as ginger. Others relate that a Mr. Spell, or Shell, or Snell, whilst viewing the House, although no dancer, began suddenly, and in his boots, to the utter amazement of his companions and Mrs. Wright, the housekeeper, to jump and caper like a bear upon a hotted floor. This story certainly seems to countenance a report that the mischief originated in the warming apparatus, an opinion that is very current, but, for my own part, I cannot conceive that the Collective Wisdom, which knows how to lay down laws for us all, should not know how to lay down flues. Rumours of Incendiarism are also very generally prevalent, and stories are in circulation of the finding of half-burnt matches and other combustibles. But these facts rest on very frail foundations. The links said to have been found in the Speaker’s garden have turned out to be nothing but German sausages; and another cock-and-a-bull that has got abroad will probably come to no better end. A Mr. Dudley affirms that he smelt the fire before it broke out, at Cooper’s Hill; but such olfactories are too much like manufactories to be believed. I am, Sir, your most obedient Servant, X. Y. Z. _Another Account._