"The moon has now increased in power, and, acting on the mist, brings out the surrounding churches one by one. There they stand in the soft light, a noble army of temples thickly sprinkled amongst the money-changers. Any taste may be suited in structural design. There are high churches, low churches; flat churches; broad churches, narrow churches; square, round, and pointed churches; churches with towers like cubical slabs sunk deeply in between the roofs of houses; towers like toothpicks, like three-pronged forks, like pepper-casters, like factory chimneys, like limekilns, like a sailor's trousers hung up to dry, like bottles of fish-sauce, and like St. Paul's—a balloon turned topsy-turvy. There they stand, like giant spectral watchmen guarding the silent city, whose beating heart still murmurs in its sleep. At the hour of midnight they proclaim, with iron tongue, the advent of a New Year, mingling a song of joy with a wail for the departed....
WREN'S ORIGINAL DESIGN FOR THE SUMMIT OF THE MONUMENT
"The dark grey churches and houses spring into existence one by one. The streets come up out of the land, and the bridges come up out of the water. The bustle of commerce, and the roar of the great human ocean—which has never been altogether silent—revive. The distant turrets of the Tower, and the long line of shipping on the river, become visible. Clear smoke still flows over the housetops, softening their outlines, and turning them into a forest of frosted trees.
"Above all this is a long black mountain-ridge of cloud, tipped with glittering gold; beyond float deep orange and light yellow ridges, bathed in a faint purple sea. Through the black ridge struggles a full, rich, purple sun, the lower half of his disc tinted with grey. Gradually, like blood-red wine running into a round bottle, the purple overcomes the grey; and at the same time the black cloud divides the face of the sun into two sections, like the visor of a harlequin."
THE MONUMENT AND THE CHURCH OF ST. MAGNUS, ABOUT 1800. (From an Old View.)
In 1732 a sailor is recorded to have slid down a rope from the gallery to the "Three Tuns" tavern, Gracechurch Street; as did also, next day, a waterman's boy. In the Times newspaper of August 22, 1827, there appeared the following hoaxing advertisement: "Incredible as it may appear, a person will attend at the Monument, and will, for the sum of £2,500, undertake to jump clear off the said Monument; and in coming down will drink some beer and eat a cake, act some trades, shorten and make sail, and bring ship safe to anchor. As soon as the sum stated is collected, the performance will take place; and if not performed, the money subscribed to be returned to the subscribers."