Any Holborn bus will take you to the corner of St. Sepulchre’s where the dismal bell tolled the passing to Newgate of the condemned criminals. On the right side of Giltspur Street is St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, that survived the Great Fire only to be rebuilt in 1730. The history of this great London hospital goes back eight hundred years, for it belonged to the Priory, but Sir Thomas Gresham’s father persuaded Henry VIII. to refound the institution in 1546. There was once a naïve inscription under the statue of the fat boy whose stone image is still to be seen at the corner where Cock Lane joins Giltspur Street, on the left. At this point, once known as Pye Corner, the Fire of London was stopped in 1666 by blowing up the houses, and the writing underneath the figure of this extremely obese youth reminded the passer-by that “the Great Fire ... was occasioned by the sin of gluttony.” I do not know what authority there was for this allegation. Whoever was responsible for the tablet probably had running in his muddled head the names of Pye or Pie Corner and Pudding Lane in Thames Street where the conflagration started. The fact that it was from the house of a baker that the flames first spread may likewise have influenced him, though it is unusual to be gluttonous on bread alone. The Fire gave the moralist good cause for thought. It was an event so tremendous, so far-reaching, so overwhelming, that it is strange that the history books of England do not linger over its significance. For in less than a week practically every landmark that went to make up the most interesting old mediæval city in the world was swept away. The ancient cathedral of St. Paul’s, 89 churches, 4 city gates, 460 streets and 13,200 houses perished in the flames. With the exception, perhaps, of the burning of Rome, there has never been so terrible a fire. Pepys wept to see it. A wonderful account has been left us by Evelyn: