Suppose thou wert to try thy skill at searching into that antiquity which involves this wonder of our City? Perchance thou mayest learn something, unless thou art half-ashamed to learn under my tuition. But why should we not now return to the matter of the Bridge? London Bridge then, as it extends itself from North to South, has _twenty cataracts_; but of _arches_, incurvated passages formed of solid stone, there are no more than _nineteen_. That platform, having the figure of a Bridge, made of level wooden planks, capable of being raised or lowered by machines, that an enemy may not find an open passage, I neither can, nor will, nor ought reasonably to call an arch. And yet thou wert greatly in hope of a mighty triumph over me in this matter; but by these words thus easily do I snatch away from thee thine air-built castles. For though Antæus thou should’st be, or Polyphemus vast, Or Atlas, on whose shoulders broad the world itself was cast, To hope to triumph o’er me were but labour spent in vain, And thou, I deem, wilt wiser be if e’er we meet again. ‘And now, get thee hence, thou Geta, and fail not to proclaim to all your pot-companions, your notable discovery of _twenty arches in London Bridge_!’ “I have next, Mr. Barbican, to commend to your notice the account of London Bridge and the Thames, given to us by that most learned man and voluminous writer, Paulus Jovius, Bishop of Nocera, an historian who was born at Como, in Italy, in 1483, and died in 1552. The passage to which I allude, is in his ‘_Descriptio Britanniæ, Scotiæ, Hyberniæ, et Orchadum_,’ Venice, 1548, small quarto, or octavo, page 12 a, beginning ‘_Sed harum et denique omnium et famam Londinum penitus obscurat_;’ but I shall here again take the freedom to anticipate time a little, and give you under one year a translation of Paulus Jovius, and Sir Paul Hentzner’s description of the same object; since the former is cited by the latter, and both are excellently well rendered into English in that very curious and rare production of the Strawberry-Hill press, entitled ‘_A Journey into England, by Paul Hentzner, in the Year M.D.XC.VIII._,’ printed in 1757, octavo; on page 4 of which the passage thus commences. ‘On the South is a Bridge of stone, 800 feet in length, of wonderful work; it is supported upon 20 piers of square stone, 60 feet high, and 30 broad, joined by arches of about 20 feet diameter. The whole is covered on each side with houses, so disposed as to have the appearance of a continued street, not at all of a Bridge. Upon this is built a tower, on whose top the heads of such as have been executed for high treason are placed upon iron spikes: we counted above thirty. Paulus Jovius, in his description of the most remarkable towns of England, says, ‘All are obscured by London; which, in the estimation of many, is Cæsar’s City of the Trinobantes, the capital of all Britain, famous for the commerce of many nations; its houses are elegantly built,