and fifty thousand, or two hundred thousand horses, as good as can be; but the horsemen are but slightly armed, having, for all weapons, a jack of mail, a dart, and bow and arrows; they know nothing of what belongeth to guns, having, in all their country, but two cities, wherein the emperor keepeth his court, without any villages or houses, but are contented to live under tents, which they remove to and fro, as they see occasion.

But to come again to our misery, after we had hearkened a while, we heard some Russians running to and fro, through the smoke, who were talking of walling the gates, to prevent the coming in of the Tartarians, who were expecting when the fire went out. I and my interpreter,, being come out of the magazine, found the ashes so hot, that we durst scarce tread upon them; but, necessity compelling us, we ran towards the chief gate, where we found twenty-five or thirty men escaped from the fire, with whom, in a few hours, we did wall that gate, and the rest, and kept a strict watch all that night with some guns that had been preserved from the fire. In the morning, seeing that the place was not defensible with so few people as we were, we sought the means to get into the castle, whose entry was then inaccessible; the governor was very glad to hear of our intention, and cried to us, We should be very welcome; but it was a most difficult thing to come in, be cause the bridges were all burnt, so that we were fain to get over the wall, having, instead of ladders, some high fir-trees thrown from the castle to us, wherein, instead of rounds to get up, they had made some notches, with a hatchet, to keep us from sliding: We got up then, with much ado; for, besides the evident incon. veniency of those rough ladders, we did carry about us the sum of four-thousand thalers, besides some jewels, which was a great hinderance to us to climb along those high trees; and that, which did double our fear, was, that we saw before our eyes some of our company, that had nothing but their bodies to save, yet tumble down from the middle of those high trees into the ditch, full of burnt bodies, so that we could not tread but upon dead corpses, whose heaps were so thick every where, that we could not avoid to tread upon them, as if it had been a hill to climb up; and that, which did augment our trouble, was, that, in treading upon them, the arms and legs broke like glass; the poor limbs of these creatures being calcined, by the vehement heat of the fire, and our feet sinking into those miserable bodies, the blood and the filth did squirt in our faces, which begot such a stench all the town over, that it was impossible to subsist in it.

The twenty-fifth of May, in the evening, as we expected, in great perplexity, what the Tartarians would attempt against us, who were about four-hundred in the castle: The Tartarians, whom we had saluted with our guns, and killed some of them that were come too near one of the castle-gates, began to go back the same way that they came in, with so much speed, that, the next morning, all that torrent was drained up; for which, having given

God thanks, and set our business in order, as well as the present calamity would permit, we went away from that desolate place.

Now, O London! consider that thy fate is not peculiar to thyself, and that will allay the bitterness of thy sufferings; remember, also, that, if thou sanctifiest this affliction to thy use, the Lord promiseth by his prophet, "That those shall reap in joy who did sow in tears." Psal. cxxvi. 6.

Ubi?
Where?

SECT. III.

In the richest city of Europe, and perhaps in the world; the greatest magazine that could be found for all sorts of merchandises, incomparable for the salubrity of the air, and conveniency of situation; magnificent in publick buildings; illustrious, in good deeds; renowned for hospitality; famous for government; venerable for antiquity; having subsisted about two-thousand years; inhabited by citizens, whose courage was equal to their fortunes; in a word, a city of which it might be said more truly than of Ormus :

Si terrarum orbis quaqua patet annulus esset,
Londinum illius gemma decusque foret.

This circumstance, which we tread over so slightly, that we may not be suspected of flattery, is not the least that aggravateth the enormity of this accident; there is none of those characters, we have given it, but are very true, and might be the worthy employment of a better pen than mine, and the subject of a full volume.

Quibus Auxiliis?

By whose Help?
SECT. IV.

HERE we must have recourse to what we have said before in the first paragraph, when we spoke of the second causes, and say that God hath made use chiefly of eight things to accomplish this work. The negligence of the master or his servants, in whose house the fire did first begin; the solitariness of the night; the narrowness of the place; the weakness of the buildings; the quantity of combustible and bituminous matters gathered thereabouts; the preceding summer which was extraordinarily hot and dry; the east-wind that blew violently all that while; and the want of engines and water to quench the fire; we shall give every one its little section, to satisfy the curiosity of those who inquire so much of the causes that have made this conflagration so violent, dismal, and irreme, diable.

I. Though there be some accidents which no human prudence can prevent; as when a man either in his own house, or going through the street, is crashed by a sudden ruin; nevertheless, the

philosophers are not to blame, when they say that every one may be the author of his own fortune, for it is certain, that, if a man neglecteth or forsaketh that Providence given him by nature, he doth together forsake the instrument and the means which his good genius maketh use of, to make him avoid the ill accidents that may befall him; for, as our soul doth only act by the organs of our body, so our genius either good or bad cannot act but by the means of our soul. Now if our soul enjoyeth a sound and temperate body, and doth her functions with purity and facility; that genius, which is always near hand, and as it were whispering at our ear, doth move and stir her to the preservation of whatsoever belongeth or concerneth her. If, on the contrary, this soul inhabiteth a body dyscratiated, melancholick, full of obstructions, or drowned in the excesses of eating and drinking, or passions, its nature being igneous, and never ceasing from action; it necessarily followeth, that, according to the disposition of the organs, she turneth to the wrong way, and neglecteth those things wherein she is merely concerned. Now, in things that might be prevented or remedied, it is an invalid excuse to say, I would never have thought that such a thing should happen: For, who can attribute it to a mere accident to put fire in an oven, and to leave a quantity of dry wood, and some flitches of bacon by it, within the sphere of its activity, and so go to bed, in leaving his providence with his slippers.

I remember that, some thirty-six years ago, in a town of Brie, a province of France, called Sezane, upon a Sunday morning, a woman that kept a chandler's shop, having occasion to snuff a candle, threw the snuff into a corner of her shop, among some old rags and papers, and so shutting the door went to mass; but, within the space of half an hour, and before she could come back again, not only her house, but those of her neighbours were all in a flame, which being helped by an east-wind which blew at that time, and which is the most dangerous of all the winds for incendies, as we shall shew hereafter, did in the space of a day and a night consume the whole town, consisting of about four-hundred houses. Can this be called a mere accident, since there is nobody so void of common sense, but might have either foreseen, or prevented so calamitous a consequence?

II. The second cause of this misfortune is, the time wherein it did happen, to wit, about one of the clock in the night, when every one is buried in his first sleep; when some for weariness, others by deboistness, have given leave to their cares to retire; when slothfulness and the heat of the bed have riveted a man to his pillow, and made him almost incapable of waking, much less of acting and helping his neighbours.

III. The narrowness of the place did also much contribute to this conflagration, for the street where it did happen, as also most of those about it, were the narrowest of the city, insomuch that in some a cart could scarce go along, and in others not at all. The danger, I did once run of my life thereabouts by the crowd of

carts, hath caused me many times to make reflexion on the co. vetousness of the citizens, and connivency of magistrates, who have suffered them from time to time to incroach upon the streets, and to jet the tops of their houses, so as from one side of the street to touch the other; which, as it doth facilitate a conflagration, so doth it also hinder the remedy, and besides taketh away the liberty of the air, making it unwholesome, and disfigureth the beauty and symmetry of the city. I hope that, for the future, his majesty, his council, and that of the city, will take care that such disorder happen no more, and will cause this city to be as commodious in its buildings, as it is happy in its situation.

IV. Now followeth the weakness of the buildings, which were almost all of wood, which by age was grown as dry as a chip: This inconvenience will easily be remedied, in building the houses with stone or brick, according to the statutes and ordinances of parliament, provided and enacted long ago in that behalf, though for the most part ill observed.

V. The quantity of combustible and bituminous matter hath given the greatest encouragement to this devouring fire; for, as the place where the fire begun was not far from the Thames, and from those wharfs where most merchandises are landed, so Thames, street, and others thereabouts, were almost nothing else but maga. zines of combustible and sulphureous merchandises : Thereabouts were a prodigious quantity of oil, butter, brandy, pitch, brimstone, saltpetre, cables, &c. and by the Thames side were almost all wharfs full of coals and wood. Now as fire of itself is nothing but light which corporifieth itself in the matter, and acteth more or less according to the disposition of it, as we see that a fire of straw is less violent than that of coals; it followeth that this fire, having lighted upon these sulphureous and bituminous matters, did feed upon them as in its proper element, and not only devoured them with case, but imparted to the next combustible matters a disposition more fitting and apt to receive it. The nature of this sulphureous fire was evidently seen in the melting of bells, iron, pots, glasses, and other metallick things, and in the calcining of stones and bricks, which no other single fire of wood, coals, or other vulgar matter could have done. I remember that, some four or five years ago, the lightning fell in Herefordshire without doing any harm in the country, but, being extinguished of itself, the exhalation of it did mix itself with a strong westerly wind, that came as far as London, beating down houses, plucking up trees by the roots, and, to shew its nitrous and sulphureous nature, did, as it were, neglect to touch wood, but did chiefly stick upon metal, and either broke or bent it; the tokens of it are seen to this day upon the steeples of Bow. church, St. Andrew, St. Giles Cripplegate, the May Polc, and other places. These sulphureous matters were also the cause of another inconveniency, which is, that the fire, being corporified in them, did extend the sphere of its activity at a further distance than ordinary, aud cast its burning beams furthest off, mixing

more exactly its atoms in the air, which it turneth almost into its own nature; which was the cause, that nobody could come nearer that fire than a hundred or two-hundred paces.

VI. The foregoing summer, that was extraordinarily hot and dry, had also disposed the matter of the buildings to admit the fire more quickly and easily, by sucking not only the intrinsecal moisture that was in them, but also that of the air which might have moistened them; for, though there be no rain falling, nevertheless there is a certain vapourish moisture in the air, which, if it be not dried up, doth moisten all porous things intrinsecally, and doth condense itself upon the solid ones, in the form of an oleaginous moisture, as doth appear upon marbles and glasses.

VII. In cometh now the east-wind to play its part in this tragedy. That unfortunate wind, of which it is commonly said, that it is neither good for man nor beast, did blow with such a wonderful fierceness all the time of the conflagration, that it did not only quicken the fire, as bellows do the furnaces, but also, getting into the streets, and among the houses, when it found any let or hinderance that did recoil it back, it blew equally both to the right and to the left, and caused the fire to burn on all sides, which hath persuaded many that this fire was miraculous. I myself remember, that going into some streets at that time, and having the wind impetuously in my face, I was in hope that at my return I should have it in my back, but it was all one, for the reason aforesaid. It would be here too tedious to speak of the nature of winds, and to shew many reasons why this wind is so dry in England, as to burn the flowers and leaves of the trees, more than the hottest sun can do; one, which, I think satisfactory, will serve for all: It is therefore to be observed, that winds do not only participate of the nature of the places where they are begot, but also of that of the countries through which they pass. Now all the southern, western, and northern winds must pass through the great Ocean to come into England, in which passage there mixes with them abundance of vapours, which cause their moisture, except the northwind, wherein the moisture is condensed by the cold; but the eastwind to come to us must pass over the greatest continent in the world, France, Germany, Hungary, Greece, Persia, &c. even to China; so that, in pursuing such a tract of land, it not only droppeth down by the way its moist effluviums, the earth, as it were, sucking them for its irroration, but also carrieth along all the hot and dry exhalations that perpetually arise out of the earth, which is the cause of its dry and burning quality. I had, formerly, a little garden, where I did bestow as much pains and care as could, to bring up some young fruit-trees that were in it, having the advantage of a very good mould; but being seated eastward, and closed narrowly by a brick wall on either side; this wind, that reigneth constantly here in England, in the months of March, April, and beginning of May, did, in their budding, so burn the leaves and the flowers, that the hottest sun could not do the like; so that I was fain to give it over, having been two or three years,