arrow was Cæsar's march upon the capital of Cassivellaunus, a city the barbaric name of which he either forgot or disregarded, but which he merely says was "protected by woods and marshes." This place north of the Thames has usually been thought to be Verulamium (St. Alban's); but it was far more likely London, as the Cassii, whose capital was Verulamium, were among the traitorous tribes who joined Cæsar against their oppressor Cassivellaunus. Moreover, Cæsar's brief description of the spot perfectly applies to Roman London, for least is certain, that the legionaries carried their eagles swiftly over his stockades of earth and fallen trees, drove away the blue-stained warriors, and swept off the half-wild cattle stored up by the Britons. Shortly after, Cæsar returned to Gaul, having heard while in Britain of the death of his favourite daughter Julia, the wife of Pompey, his great rival. His camp at Richborough or Rutupia was far distant; the dreaded equinoctial gales were at hand; and Gaul, he knew, might at any moment of his absence start into a flame. His inglorious ANCIENT ROMAN PAVEMENT FOUND IN THREADNEEDLE STREET, 1841 (see page 21). ages protected on the north by a vast forest, full of deer and wild boars, and which, even as late as the reign of Henry II., covered a great region, but has now shrunk into the not very wild districts of St. John's Wood and Caen Wood. On the north the town found a natural moat in the broad fens of Moorfields, Finsbury, and Houndsditch, while on the south ran the Fleet and the Old Bourne. Indeed, according to that credulous enthusiast, Stukeley, Cæsar, marching from Staines to London, encamped on the site of Old St. Pancras Church, round which edifice Stukeley found evident traces of a great Prætorian camp. However, whether Cassivellaunus, the King of Middlesex and Hertfordshire, had his capital at London or at St. Alban's, this much at campaign had lasted just four months and a halfhis first had been far shorter. As Cæsar himself wrote to Cicero, our rude island was defended by stupendous rocks, there was not a scrap of the gold that had been reported, and the only prospect of booty was in slaves, from whom there could be expected neither "skill in letters nor in music." In truth, all that Cæsar had won from the people of Kent and Hertfordshire had been blows and buffets, for there were men in Britain even then. The prowess of the British charioteers became a standing joke in Rome against the soldiers of Cæsar. Horace and Tibullus both speak of the Briton as unconquered. The bow which the strong Roman hand had for a moment bent quickly PART OF OLD LONDON WALL NEAR FALCON SQUARE, 1870. of Brute of Troy. The successor of the warlike Celtic etymologists differ, as etymologists usually do, about the derivation of the name of London. Lon, or Lun, meant, they say, either a lake, a wood, a populous place, a plain, or a ship-town. This last by fens on the north; and on the east by the marshy low ground of Wapping. It was a high, dry, and fortified point of communication between the river and the inland country of Essex and Hertfordshire, a safe sixty miles from the sea, and central as a depôt and meeting-place for the tribes of Kent and Middlesex. Hitherto the London about which we have been conjecturing has been a mere cloud city. The first mention of real London is by Tacitus, who, writing in the reign of Nero (A.D. 62, more than a century after the landing of Cæsar), in that style of his so full of vigour and so sharp in outline, Wren supposed that Watling Street, of which Cannon Street is a part, was the High Street of Roman London. Another street ran west along Holborn from Cheapside, and from Cheapside probably north. A northern road ran by Aldgate, and probably Bishopsgate. The road from Dover came either over a ferry near the site of the present London Bridge or higher up at Dowgate, from Stoney Street on the Surrey side. that it seems fit rather to be engraved on steel were reckoned. Early Roman London was scarcely larger than Hyde Park. Mr. Roach Smith, the best of all authorities on the subject, gives its length from the Tower to Ludgate, east and west, at about a mile; and north and south, that is from London Wall to the Thames, at about half a mile. The earliest Roman city was even smaller, for Roman sepulchres have been found in Bow Lane, Moorgate Street, Bishopsgate Within, which must at that time have been beyond the walls. The Roman cemeteries of Smithfield, St. Paul's, Whitechapel, the Minories, and Spitalfields, are of later dates, and are in all cases beyond the old line of circumvallation, according to the sound Roman custom fixed by law. The earlier London Mr. Roach Smith describes as an irregular space, the five main gates corresponding with Bridgegate, Ludgate, Bishopsgate, Aldersgate, and Aldgate. The north wall followed for some part the course of Cornhill and Leadenhall Street; the eastern Billiter Street and Mark Lane; the southern Thames Street; and the western the London probably soon sprang, phoenix-like, from east side of Walbrook. Of the larger Roman wall, the fire, though history leaves it in darkness to there were within the memory of man huge, shapeenjoy a rest of 200 years. In the early part of the less masses, with trees growing upon them, opposite second century Ptolemy, the geographer, speaks of what is now Finsbury Circus. In 1852 a piece of it as a city of the Kentish people; but Mr. Craik Roman wall on Tower Hill was rescued from the very ingeniously conjectures that the Greek writer improvers, and built into some stables and outtook his information from Phoenician works de- houses; but not before a careful sketch had been scriptive of Britain, written before even the invasion effected by the late Mr. Fairholt, one of the best of of Cæsar. Theodosius, a general of the Emperor our antiquarian draughtsmen. The later Roman Valentinian, who saved London from gathered London was in general outline the same in shape hordes of Scots, Picts, Franks, and Saxons, is sup- and size as the London of the Saxons and Norposed to have repaired the walls of London, which mans. The newer walls Pennant calculates at had been first built by the Emperor Constantine 3 miles 165 feet in circumference, they were 22 feet early in the fourth century. In the reign of high, and guarded with forty lofty towers. Theodosius, London, now called Augusta, became end of the last century large portions of the old one of the chief, if not the chief, of the seventy Roman wall were traceable in many places, but Roman cities in Britain. In the famous "Itinerary" time has devoured almost the last morsels of that of Antoninus (about the end of the third century) | great pièce de résistance. In 1763 Mr. Gough made London stands as the goal or starting-point of seven out of the fifteen great central Roman roads in England. Camden considers the London Stone, now enshrined in the south wall of St. Swithin's Church, Cannon Street, to have been the central milestone of Roman England, from which all the chief roads radiated, and by which the distances a drawing of a square Roman tower (one of three) then standing in Houndsditch. It was built in alternate layers of massive square stones and red tiles. The old loophole for the sentinel had been enlarged into a square latticed window. In 1857, while digging foundations for houses on the northeast side of Aldermanbury Postern, the workmen as Roman London.] REMAINS OF ROMAN WALL. 21 came on a portion of the Roman wall strengthened altar, and proves nothing; and the ox bones, if by blind arches. All that now substantially remains of the old fortification is a bastion in St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate ; a fragment in the street known London Wall"; another portion exists in the Old Bailey, concealed behind houses; and a fourth near George Street, Tower Hill. Portions of the wall have, however, been also broached in Falcon Square (one of which we have engraved), Bush Lane, Scott's Yard, and Cornhill, and others are to be seen in cellars and warehouses near the Tower and the Minories. The line of the Roman wall ran from the Tower straight to Aldgate; there making an angle, it continued to Bishopsgate. From there it turned westward to St. Giles's Churchyard, where it veered south to Falcon Square. At this point it continued on to Aldersgate, running under Christ's Hospital, and onward to Giltspur Street. There forming an angle, it proceeded directly to Ludgate towards the Thames, passing to the south of St. Andrew's Church. The wall then crossed Addle Street, and took a course along Upper and Lower Thames Street towards the Tower. In Thames Street the wall has been found built on oaken piles; on these was laid a stratum of chalk and stones, and over this a course of large, hewn sandstones, cemented with quicklime, sand, and pounded tile. The body of the wall was constructed of ragstone, flint, and lime, bonded at intervals with courses of plain and curve-edged tiles. That Roman London grew slowly there is abundant proof. In building the new Exchange, the workmen came on a gravel-pit full of oystershells, cattle bones, old sandals, and shattered pottery. No coin found there being later than Severus indicates that this ground was bare waste outside the original city until at least the latter part of the third century. How far Roman London eventually spread its advancing waves of houses may be seen from the fact that Roman wall-paintings, indicating villas of men of wealth and position, have been found on both sides of High Street, Southwark, almost up to Sc. George's Church; while one of the outlying Roman cemeteries bordered the Kent Road. From the horns of cattle having been dug up in St. Paul's Churchyard, the monks, ever eager to discover traces of that Paganism on which they engrafted Christianity, conjectured that a temple of Diana once stood on the site of St. Paul's. A stone altar, with a rude figure of the amazon goddess sculptured upon it, was indeed discovered in making the foundations for Goldsmiths' Hall, Cheapside; but this was a mere votive or private any, found at St. Paul's, were perhaps refuse thrown into a rubbish-heap outside the old walls. As to the Temple of Apollo, supposed to have been replaced by Westminster Abbey, that is merely an invention of rival monks to glorify Thorney Island, and to render its antiquity equal to the fabulous claims of St. Paul's. Nor is there any positive proof that shrines to British gods ever stood on either place, though that they may have done so is not at all improbable. The existing relics of Roman London are far more valuable and more numerous than is generally supposed. Innumerable tesselated pavements, masterpieces of artistic industry and taste, have been found in the City. A few of these should be noted. In 1854 part of the pavement of a room, twenty-eight feet square, was discovered, when the Excise Office was pulled down, between Bishopsgate Street and Broad Street. The central subject was supposed to be the Rape of Europa. A few years before another pavement was met with near the same spot. In 1841 two pavements were dug up under the French Protestant Church in Threadneedle Street. The best of these we have engraved. In 1792 a circular pavement was found in the same locality; and there has also been dug up in the same street a curious female head, the size of life, formed of coloured stones and glass. In 1805 a beautiful Roman pavement was disinterred on the north-east angle of the Bank of England, near the gate opening into Lothbury, and is now in the British Museum. In 1803 a fine specimen of pavement was found in front of the East-India House, Leadenhall Street, the central design being Bacchus reclining on a panther. In this pavement twenty distinct tints had been successfully used. Other pavements have been cut through in Crosby Square, Bartholomew Lane, Fenchurch Street, and College Street. The soil, according to Mr. Roach Smith, seems to have risen over them at the rate of nearly a foot in a century. The statuary found in London should also not be forgotten. One of the most remarkable pieces was a colossal bronze head of the Emperor Hadrian, dredged up from the Thames a little below London Bridge. It is now in the British Museum. A colossal bronze hand, thirteen inches long, was also found in Thames Street, near the Tower. In 1857, near London Bridge, the dredgers found a beautiful bronze Apollino, a Mercury of exquisite design, a priest of Cybele, and a figure supposed to be Jupiter. The Apollino and Mercury are masterpieces of ideal beauty and grace. In 1842 a chef d'œuvre was dug out near the old Roman wall in Queen Street, Cheapside. It was the bronze stooping figure of an archer. It has silver eyes; and the perfect expression and anatomy display the highest art. In 1825 a graceful little silver figure of the child Harpocrates, the God of Silence, looped with a gold chain, was found in the Thames, and is now in the British Museum. In 1839 a pair of gold armlets were dug up in Queen Street, Cheapside. In a In a kiln in St. Paul's Churchyard, in 1677, there were found lamps, bottles, urns, and dishes. Among other relics of Roman London drifted down by time we may instance articles of red glazed pottery, tiles, glass cups, window glass, bath scrapers, gold hairpins, enamelled clasps, sandals, writing tablets, bronze spoons, forks, distaffs, bells, dice, and millstones. As for coins, which the Romans seem to have hid in every conceivable nook, Mr. Roach Smith says that within twenty years upwards of 2,000 were, to his own knowledge, found in London, chiefly in the bed of the Thames. Only one Greek coin, as far as we know, has ever been met with in London excavations. The Romans left deep footprints wherever they trod. Many of our London streets still follow the lines they first laid down. The river bank still heaves beneath the ruins of their palaces. London Stone, as we have already shown, still stands to mark the starting-point of the great roads that they designed. In a lane out of the Strand there still exists a bath where their sinewy youth laved their limbs, dusty from the chariot races at the Campus Martius at Finsbury. Martius at Finsbury. The pavements trodden by the feet of Hadrian and Constantine still lie buried under the restless wheels that roll over our City streets. The ramparts which the legionaries guarded have not yet crumbled to dust, though the rude people they conquered have themselves long since grown into conquerors. Roman London now exists only in fragments, invisible save to the prying antiquary. As the seed is to be found hanging to the root of the ripe wheat, so some filaments of the first germ of London, of the British hut and the Roman villa, still exist hidden under the foundations of the busy city that now teems with thousands of inhabitants. We tread under foot daily the pride of our old oppressors. CHAPTER II. TEMPLE BAR. Temple Bar-The Golgotha of English Traitors-When Temple Bar was made of Wood-Historical Pageants at Temple Bar-The Associations of Temple Bar-Mischievous Processions through Temple Bar-The First grim Trophy-Rye-House Plot Conspirators. TEMPLE BAR was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren, in 1670-72, soon after the Great Fire had swept away eighty-nine London churches, four out of the seven City gates, 460 streets, and 13,200 houses, and had destroyed fifteen of the twenty-six wards, and laid waste 436 acres of buildings, from the Tower eastward to the Inner Temple westward. The old black gateway, once the dreaded Golgotha of English traitors, separated, it should be remembered, the Strand from Fleet Street, the city from the shire, and the Freedom of the City of London from the Liberty of the City of Westminster, As Hatton (1708-Queen Anne) says,-"This gate opens not immediately into the City itself, but into the Liberty or Freedom thereof." We need hardly say that nothing can be more erroneous than the ordinary London supposition that Temple Bar ever formed part of the City fortifications. Mr. Gilbert à Beckett, laughing at this tradition, once said in Punch: "Temple Bar has always seemed to me a weak point in the fortifications of London. Bless you, the besieging army would never stay to bom bard it-they would dash through the barber's." The Bar, after having been for many years a great obstruction to the traffic, was removed in the winter of 1877-8, whilst the New Law Courts were in process of erection. The Bar was of Portland stone, which London smoke alternately blackened and calcined; and each façade had four Corinthian pilasters, an entablature, and an arched pediment. On the west (Strand) side, in two niches, stood, as eternal sentries, Charles I. and Charles II., in Roman costume. Charles I. long ago lost his bâton, as he once deliberately lost his head. Over the keystone of the central arch there used to be the royal arms. On the east side were James I. and Elizabeth (by many able writers supposed to be Anne of Denmark, the queen of James I.). was pointing her white finger at Child's; while he. looking down on the passing cabs, seemed to say. "I am nearly tired of standing; suppose we go to Whitehall, and sit down a bit ?" These affected, mean statues, with their crinkly drapery, were the work of a vain, half-crazed sculptor, named John Bushnell, who died mad in Bushnell, who had visited Rome and 1701. |