“The last view of this edifice which I shall at present notice to you, is one copied by Thomas Wood, Engraved by J. Pye, and dedicated to Brass Crosby, Esq., Lord Mayor, the Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of London; and it represents the ‘_South View of the said City and part of Southwarke, as it appeared about the year 1599_.’ I am half inclined to believe, however, that this prospect is made up from Hollar’s View, published in 1657; as it is certainly taken from the same point. The Bridge rises obliquely on the right hand: at the South end of it appears the Southwark Gate, and beyond it is placed the rich tower which I have already described to you; whilst a series of buildings, forming two distinct groups, with spaces between them, finish the picture, which has the old Church of St. Magnus for its Northern boundary. Even at this period, probably, some of the Arches of London Bridge had received those names by which they were so long afterwards known, though they were first inserted in Stow’s ‘_Survey_,’ by Richard Bloome, one of the last of his Continuators before Strype; but his account of these locks I shall speak of in the next century, and I will now only observe that such were the features of LONDON BRIDGE IN THE YEAR 1599. [Illustration] “‘Thanks be praised!’ Master Barnaby,” said I, as my indefatigable historian arrived at this period, “‘thanks be praised!’ as the Countryman says in the Play, ‘I thought we would never ha’ got hither, for we’ve had a power of crosses upo’ the road.’ If you do not make the better speed through the next two centuries, mine honest friend, you will scarcely allow me time to conclude your narrative by a brief account of the New Bridge, and the grand ceremonial of its foundation: here’s your health, however, and if contributing to one’s repose, be a praiseworthy action, why, truly, I’m much your debtor, good Mr. Postern.” “Rest you merry, Sir,” replied he of the sack tankard; “I see that you’re one of the humourists of Old London; and, methinks, you ought to be somewhat grateful to me for furnishing you with occasion to be witty; but, to speak more seriously, I pray you to recollect that I have conducted you through a period of more than six hundred years, and that too in a history of which the materials are to be sought for, and extracted, from a vast multitude of very opposite sources. And even when we have found them, you know, my good Mr. Barbican, that they resemble those grains of gold which the wandering Bohemians recover from the sand; of little or no value till collected into a mass, and even then surprising by their insignificance. Surely, he is to be pitied, who becomes the historian of a subject equally ancient, interesting, hopeless, and unknown.”