before in company with my father, to go to Paris, two years before he
died.

It was drawing on to sunset as we rode up through the Southwark fields
and, at the top of a little eminence in the ground saw for the first
time plainly all the City displayed before us.

We came along the Kent road, having caught sight again and again of such
spires as had risen after the Great Fire, and of the smoke that rose
from the chimneys; but I may say that I was astonished at the progress
the builders had made from what I could remember of seven years before.
Then there had still been left great open spaces where there should have
been none; now it was a city once more; and even the Cathedral shewed
its walls and a few roofs above the houses. The steeples too of Sir
Christopher Wren's new churches pricked everywhere; though I saw later
that there was yet much building to be done, both in these and in many
of the greater houses. My man James rode with me; (for I had been
careful not to form too great intimacies with the party with whom I had
ridden from Dover); and I remarked to him upon the matter.

"And there, sir," he said to me, pointing to it, "is the monument no
doubt that they have raised to it."

And so we found it to be a day or two later--a tall pillar, with an
inscription upon it saying that the Fire had been caused by the
Papists--a black lie, as every honest man knows.

By the time that we came to London Bridge the sun was yet lower, setting
in a glory of crimson, so that it was hard to see against it much of
Westminster, across the Southwark marshes and the river; but yet I could