Note 10 — Chapter XVI

The extreme picturesqueness of these fires—in part a consequence of the great height and peculiar architecture of the buildings which they destroyed—caught the nice eye of Sir Walter Scott. "I can conceive," we find him saying, in one of his letters of the period, "no sight more grand or terrible than to see these lofty buildings on fire from top to bottom, vomiting out flames, like a volcano, from every aperture, and finally crashing down one after another, into an abyss of fire, which resembled nothing but hell; for there were vaults of wine and spirits which set up huge jets of flames whenever they were called into activity by the fall of these massive fragments. Between the corner of the Parliament Square and the Tron Church, all is destroyed excepting some new buildings at the lower extremity."