The fire having continued all this night, which was as light as day for ten miles round, in a dreadful manner, I went on foot to the same place.  The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonished, that from the beginning they hardly stirred to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures, without attempting to save even their goods.  It leapt after a prodigious manner from house to house, and street to street, at great distances one from the other.  Here we saw the Thames covered with goods floating, all the barges and boats laden with what some had time and courage to save.  And the fields for many miles were strewn with movables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away.  Oh, the miserable and calamitous spectacle!  London was, but is no more!

October 17, 1671.  My Lord Henry Howard would needs have me go with him to Norwich.  I was not hard to be persuaded, having a desire to see that famous scholar and physician, Dr. T. Browne, author of the “Religio Medici,” now lately knighted.  Thither, then, went my lord and I alone in his flying chariot with six horses.

Next morning I went to see Sir Thomas Browne.  His whole house and garden were a paradise and cabinet of rarities, especially medals, books, plants, and natural things.  Sir Thomas had a collection of the eggs of all the birds he could procure, that country being frequented by several birds which seldom or never go farther into the land—­as cranes, storks, eagles, and variety of waterfowl.  He led me to see all the remarkable places of this ancient city, being one of the largest and noblest in England.

January 5, 1674.  I saw an Italian opera in music, the first that had been in England of this kind.

November 15, 1678.  The queen’s birthday.  I never saw the court more brave, nor the nation in more apprehension and consternation.  Titus Oates has grown so presumptuous as to accuse the queen of intending to poison the king, which certainly that pious and virtuous lady abhorred the thought of.  Oates probably thought to gratify some who would have been glad his majesty should have married a fruitful lady; but the king was too kind a husband to let any of these make impression on him.  However, divers of the Popish peers were sent to the Tower, accused by Oates, and all the Roman Catholic lords were by a new Act for ever excluded the Parliament, which was a mighty blow.

May 5, 1681.  Came to dine with me Sir Christopher Wren, his majesty’s architect and surveyor, now building the cathedral of St. Paul, and the column in memory of the City’s conflagration, and was in hand with the building of fifty parish churches.  A wonderful genius had this incomparable person.