On the news of the fire in the Tower of London being told to Sir Francis
Burdett, he hurried to the scene of the conflagration, which must have
suggested some unpleasing reminiscences of his lost popularity and faded
glory. Some thirty years ago, those very walls received him like a second
Hampden, the undaunted defender of his country's rights;--on last Monday
he entered them a broken-down unhonoured parasite. Gazing on the black and
smouldering ruins before him--he perhaps compared them to his own
patriotism, for he was heard to matter audibly--
[Illustration: CAN IT BE THAT THIS IS ALL REMAINS OF THEE?]
* * * * *