The compactly built part of the London of 1415 was a narrow strip not a mile long, which stretched east and west through the middle of what is now called “the City.” The houses were densest in the region of Cheapside. South of the strip were scattering residences which stood in turfy lawns which sloped to the river. North of the strip, fields and country homes extended to the walls. Let us represent that London by three checker-board squares placed in a row; then open out a New York newspaper like a book, and the space which it covers will properly represent the London of to-day by comparison. It is the difference between your hand and a blanket. It is possible that that ancient London had 100,000 inhabitants, and that 100,000 outsiders came to town to see the procession. The present London contains five or six million inhabitants, and it has been calculated that the population has jumped to 10,000,000 to-day. The pageant of 1415 was to celebrate the gigantic victory of Agincourt, then and still the most colossal in England’s history. From that day to this there has been nothing that even approached it but Plassey. It was the third and greatest in the series of monster victories won by the English over the French in the Hundred Years’ War--Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt. At Agincourt, according to history, 15,000 English, under Henry V, defeated and routed an army of 100,000 French. Sometimes history makes it 8,000 English and 60,000 French; but no matter, in both cases the proportions are preserved. Eight thousand of the French nobility were slain and the rest of the order taken prisoners--1,500 in number--among them the Dukes of Orléans and Bourbon and Marshal Boucicaut; and the victory left the whole northern half of France an English possession. This wholesale depletion of the aristocracy made such a stringent scarcity in its ranks that when the young peasant girl, Joan of Arc, came to undo Henry’s mighty work fourteen years later she could hardly gather together nobles enough to man her staff. The battle of Agincourt was fought on the 25th of October, and a few days later the tremendous news was percolating through England. Presently it was sweeping the country like a tidal wave, like a cyclone, like a conflagration. Choose your own figure, there is no metaphor known to the language that can exaggerate the tempest of joy and pride and exultation that burst everywhere along the progress of that great news. The king came home and brought his soldiers with him--he and they the idols of the nation, now. He brought his 1,500 captive knights and nobles, too--we shall not see any such output of blue blood as that to-day, bond or free. The king rested three weeks in his palace, the Tower of London, while the people made preparations and prepared the welcome due him. On the 22d of December all was ready.