“You very well know, my good Mr. Barbican, that Gulielmus Stephanides, or, as the vulgar call him, William Fitz-Stephen, who was the friend and secretary of Thomas à Becket, a native of London, and who died about 1191, in his invaluable tract ‘_Descriptio Nobilissimæ Civitatis Londoniæ_,’ folio 26, tells us that to the North of London, there existed, in his days, the large remains of that immense forest which once covered the very banks of this brave river. ‘_Proxime patet ingens foresta_,’ &c. begins the passage; and pray observe that I quote from the best edition with a commentary by that excellent Antiquary Dr. Samuel Pegge, published in London, in the year 1772, in quarto. Ever, Mr. Barbican, while you live, ever quote from the _editio optima_ of every author whom you cite; for, next to a knowledge of books themselves, is an acquaintance with the best editions. But to return, Sir; in those woody groves of yew, which the old citizens wisely encouraged for the making of their bows, were then hunted the stag, the buck, and the doe; and the great Northern road, which now echoes the tuneful Kent bugle of mail-coach-guards, was then an extensive wilderness, resounding with the shrill horns of the Saxon Chiefs, as they waked up the deer from his lair of vert and brushwood. The very paths, too, that now behold the herds of oxen and swine driven town-ward to support London’s hungry thousands, then echoed with the bellowing of savage bulls, and the harsh grunting of many a stout wild boar. But, as you have observed, _I_ am to describe scenes, and _you_ are to moralise upon their changes, so we’ll hasten down again to the water-side, only observing, that the site of the ancient British London is yet certainly marked out to you, by the old rhyming stone in Pannier Alley, by St. Paul’s, which saith:-- ‘WHEN Y^V HAVE SOVGHT THE CITY ROVND, YET STILL THIS IS THE HIGHEST GROVND.’