Thus I left it this afternoone burning, a resemblance of Sodom, or the last day.

It forcibly call'd to my mind that passage--_non enim hic habemus stabilem civitatem_: the ruines resembling the picture of Troy.

London was, but is no more! Thus I returned.' For days the conflagration raged, although the whole situation might probably have been saved if the advice of seamen, then as now amongst the bravest and most practical of Britain's sons, had been followed.
When the court suburb of Whitehall began to be threatened,--'but oh, the confusion there was then at the Court!'-- the gentlemen, 'who hitherto had stood as men intoxicated, with their hands acrosse,....

began to consider that nothing was likely to put a stop but the blowing up of so many houses as might make a wider gap than any had yet been made by the ordinary method of pulling them downe with engines; this some stout seamen propros'd early enough to have sav'd neere ye whole citty, but this some tenacious and avaritious men, aldermen, etc., would not permitt, because their houses must have been of the first.' At length, however, the fire died out, the houseless citizens finding refuge in tents and miserable huts and hovels hastily erected about St.George's fields and Moorfields as far as Highgate.

But Evelyn's abode had remained untouched.