Within The Shadow Of The Shaft.

funnily shaped urn . I believe in the tradition that it was intended to represent the probably mythical fire-ball that , thrown into the baker ' s wood store , ori ginated the conflagration . The first idea of Wren , in designing the monument , was to pierce the shaft with loopholes—as , indeed , he subsequently did—but to add to each slit a protruding tongue of lambent flame , gilt so as to convey the impression of a column on fire—a very tawdry notionif I may

, be alloAved to be so presumptuous as to say so—then , aboA'e the corona of the gallery , he proposed to place a pedestal surmounted by a huge gilt Phoenix , of course emblematising Augusta * rising again from her ashes . Whether this was suggested to him b y the incident , so often narrated that I am half ashamed of repeating it here , or not , it is impossible to say . I have already , meet cidpaconvinced my readers that I am incorriible in my habit of

crys-, g tallising old traditions . It is saicl that Avhen Wren had found the architectural centre of St . Paul ' s Cathedral among the ruins , he called for a workman to bring a flat stone to mark the spot . The man took at random a slab l ying near , among the rubbish , ancl when it was turned over it proved to be the covering for a tomb , and displayed , in deeply-indented characters , the word

Resurgam . Si mm vera e ben trovato . Probably the story is apocryphal , but it is , at all events , worth presevering . Wren , however , certainly had the Resurgam idea in his mind when he projected the Phoenix , but , reflection suggesting that the resistance offered to the wind by the outstretched wings would probably endanger the safety of the entire fabric , induced him to abandon the idea . Then , still clinging to the notion of the " column in flames , " he proposed to substitute for a capital a gilt statue of His MajestCharles the

y Second , in the habit of a Roman warrior . How fond royalt y used to be of being represented in Roman military costume . But , in the meanwhile , and during the seven years the column was in building , the fever of the Popish plot broke out . Perhaps the incongruity of a mast-headed monarch on the top of a burning shaft—a St . Simeon St ylites with his support consuming beneath him—struck the artistic mind ; but most probablthe roused passions

y of the citizens caused them to recur to the fireball theory , ancl forced them to ado 23 t for an ornament a representation of the deAdce by which every loyal Protestant then believed Popish villainies had destroyed the opulent city . So Ave arrive at the conclusion that the top of the monument is crowned by an urn vomiting flames , or a vase shaped like a fire-ball : " Vich-ever you please , my little dears ; you pays your money and you takes your choice . "

And now about the fire-ball . This hypothesis of the origin of the fire seems solel y to rest upon the testimony of a crack-brained Frenchman , one Hubert , who to be sure vouched his testimony with his life . The particulars of his case are veiy obscure . The papers containing the various examinations connected with the outbreak of the fire , taken by order of the House of pommons , t contain only remote references to the unhajipy Frenchman ; but it may be gathered from the contemporary historians that he Avas a

watchmaker from Rouen , in Normandy , a Roman Catholic—or Papist as be is called in those chronicles—no doubt , although some assert thathe was a Norman Huguenot ; but there does not seem any sufficient ground for asserting , with some of the heated writers , thathe was a member of the Society of Jesus . He gave himself into custody when the fury of search for incendiaries was at its height , and , on his own confession only , was tried , and , against the opinion of the learned judge who presided on the trial , found guilt y ancl executed . The keeper of Newgate was directed in the brief interval that elapsed between trial and execution to conduct him over the ruins , and this sad excursion he seems to have taken on