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a most fascinating array of problems-all as yet unsolved. When, how and why they were made are all unanswered questions. The first point is whether they were made, in any sense of the word. More than any other type of old road their character suggests deliberate design. One can dream of the noble savage, surrounded by the terrors that walk by night and day, furtively digging the unseen way by which his beasts and himself could stealthily pass from the high pastures to the low watering places. But the dream is encircled by difficulties. The noble savage could hardly possess the tools necessary to complete such a work, for the hollow ways are often ten feet deep and sometimes more, even on comparatively hard ground. Again, given the tools and the persistence of purpose, what became of the immense amount of soil that must have been removed? In the great camps it is clear that the soil dug from the fosse was used to form the vallum, and vallum and fosse stand forth as memorials of the operation. In most hollow ways there is no trace of a bank, unless it be a hedge dating only from the period of enclosures. The sides drop down almost perpendicularly from the level land, so that in approaching them from the side they appear without warning. The alternative is that the use of the way aided by the wash of rain down the slopes, made the hollow; but then we have seen that when ridgeways descend a slope they tend to spread out, whereas hollow ways are usually extremely narrow.

One point appears to be clear, that when a hollow way descends from a hill there is usually some sign of early habitation upon the hill itself. A thorough examination and comparison of the hollow ways in different parts of the country is necessary before the problems of their nature and age can be properly approached, much less determined.

The whole subject of our old roads opens out a most attractive branch of field archæology. The work to be done is immense. Some general principles, at least, appear to be well founded, but a careful survey of the whole country offers untold opportunities for discovery, and every new discovery gives added certainty to the principles, or affords the means for correcting them. Here is a huge field spread out for the delectation of the local antiquary, in which he can be assured that careful observation will be of permanent value. And the work itself makes an irresistible appeal to the lover of the open air. It must be done on the high

places of the earth, upon the immemorial turf, far from the hum of industrial civilisation. It is surrounded by all the atmosphere of scientific romance, for such a humble thing as a cattle track may exceed in antiquity the oldest memorial of an ancient city. These things call to mind, inevitably, the words of the mystic physician of Norwich: "Time, which antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make a dust of all things, hath yet spared these minor monuments. In vain we hope to be known by open and visible conservatories, when to be unknown was the means of their continuation and obscurity their protection."

H. J. RANDALL

1.

THE GROWTH OF LONDON

The Great Plague in London in 1665. By WALTER G. BELL. The
Bodley Head. 1924.

2. The Great Fire of London. By WALTER G. BELL. The Bodley Head. 1924.

HARLOTTE Brontë says in one place :

CHAR

"Descending, I went wandering whither chance might lead, in a still ecstasy of freedom and enjoyment; and I got-I know not how-I got into the heart of City life. I saw and felt London at last. I got into the Strand, I went up Cornhill; I mixed with the life pouring along; I dared the perils of crossings. To do this, and to do it utterly alone, gave me perhaps an irrational, but a real pleasure. Since those days I have seen the West End, the parks, the fine squares; but I love the City far better. The City seems so much more in earnest its business, its rush, its roar, and such serious things, sights and sounds. The City is getting its living-the West End but enjoying its pleasure. At the West End you may be amused, but in the City you are deeply excited."

Few acuter appreciations of what and where real London is have ever been made, though it is probably true that millions know Trafalgar Square who have never seen Lombard Street or Mincing Lane. The provincial and oversea visitor to his capital makes for Wembley and theatre land. Houndsditch, Eastcheap and East India Avenue are a closed book to him. He misses the core and spring of the whole.

Holiday makers come, of course, for amusement, not for instruction. And the germ from which all the vast huddle sprang the houses and offices and banks, the theatres and hotels and paved streets-does not reveal itself to the uninstructed eye. You may, indeed, tread a daily path for fifty years, over the Bridge and up Watling Street, without realising at all what history is around and beneath you. This is the incurious habit of countless thousands. Perhaps it always will be. Not to all is it given to be fascinated by the lure of the past, to enquire into the how and the why of our daily conditions.

Nor, to all seeming, can the mystery of the portentous growth be realised, save by patient delving into records, which are as devious as the streets they light up. You must both see with

the loving outward eye and study with the understanding heart. The capital that made the empire, the Mecca of all true Englishmen, is worth some pains in the unravelling of its secret. There is an ever-growing cult of those who have made the discovery.

Centuries before any Roman occupation, merchants from Gaul had brought their civilisation to this island, and had set up their marts on Thames-side. The ports of Walbrook and Fleet had already, when Aulus Plautius wrote, a few years after the conquest, made of it a famous commercial resort (its very name is Celtic for ship's fort); and Tacitus tells us that, when Suetonius was governor, it was greatly thronged with the coming and going of many merchants." Thus, from the very outset, its main purpose was fixed: it was to be the home of traders of those that go down to the sea in ships and occupy their business in great waters. Many roles beside have been thrust upon it in twenty centuries: the advancement of true learning, the maintenance of a pure faith, the spread of justice between man and man, the duty of protecting the weak in backward communities, the provision of might to defend the right. Navies, Law Courts, Parliament Houses, Churches, are only the concrete expressions of each succeeding urge. Yet all are rooted in the dominant instinct to multiply and replenish the earth, to trade, to be secure, to be free. If the city walls, built first in the fourth century, gave security, the outlet through the Thames estuary gave that access to an outer world which meant wealth. A race of men arrived, capable of using the unique advantages. After all the changes of the years there is no essential alteration of the case.

Durch hunger und durch Liebe

Erhält sich die Weltgetriebe.

But for that self-same access to new worlds across the seas the millions of London would assuredly perish or would never have been. Because of the temper begotten on the Thames, a city of merchants speaks with authority in Calcutta and Hongkong, is master on the Nile and the Limpopo. By dint of what vicissitudes and setbacks, through what quagmires of dissension and distress, wars, fires, plagues, corruption, superstition, cowardice, this result has been achieved, no historian will ever tell. The most faithful and lurid witnesses, could they but speak, would be the deep stones of Cheapside and Tower Hill, or the

oldest paving blocks of the churches. Even the poor remains of Roman villa and of city wall are modern compared with cobbles over which Boadicea rode trampling. Records of toilers

Not the great or well bespoke
But the mere uncounted folk,
Of whose life or death is none
Report or lamentation -

would be eloquent of the 400 years after Cæsar's landing.

For long time, too, those stones were strangely available, being put to curious use. From fear of northern invaders, the city walls were piled in great haste. The Citadel, standing on ground between Cannon Street Station and Mincing Lane, with the Bridge to which it was a tête du pont, protected the ports and the market place. St. Peter's, Cornhill, was just within, or just without, the forum. But when the 380 acres were enclosed, lest a worse massacre than the terrible slaughter of A.D. 61 should befall, the builders laid hands for their purposes on all that was nearest-millstones, funeral monuments, statues, altars, columns from the forum, stones from amphitheatres, private houses, imperial offices. Even so, when Romans retired before Saxons, and black confusion reigned, Alfred's rebuilding of those same walls (with new gates-Aldersgate, Bishopsgate, Newgate) brought back strength and prosperity, plentiful trading with the Low Countries and France. For the same hand which restored the walls of the capital created the navy and nurtured religion Churches there had been, of course, before the Saxon ruin; but to King Alfred was largely due the covering of the land with those famous shrines which made and make London ever famous. It has been said,

As a rule, men imagine that morals are dependent on religion. Religion is dependent on morals. The moral sentiments are buried deep in the unconscious mind, where their presence is not easily discovered. Since morals depend on deep-rooted and universal instinct, implanted by long ages of evolution . . . they supply a bond of cohesion sufficient to overcome to a great extent the disruptive tendency of unchecked egoism.---Hugh Elliot.

Thus the action of Aelfrida (Alfred's daughter) in giving to the Benedictine Abbot of Ghent all that land which stretches to-day from Lewisham and the Crystal Palace to Woolwich and Plumstead, was an outward token of character and morals. The

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