proceeding in a westerly direction from Leadenhall Market, under the Woolpack Tavern in Gracechurch Street, along St. Peter’s Alley, a few feet on the south side of St. Peter’s, continuing under the banking-house of Messrs. Prescott, Dimsdale & Co. (50 Cornhill), _supposed_ to continue under the roadway of Cornhill, and appearing again in the foundations of the new building now being erected on the _north_ side of Cornhill (No. 70) for the Union Bank of Australia.” (Middlesex and Herts _Notes and Queries_, 1897.) This wall, if one may guess, appears to have been parallel to the 5 ft. wall on the north of the church, and between them seem to have been important chambers of the Forum buildings. Dr. Bury has lately given reasons for thinking that the Romans did not finally evacuate Britain until 442 (_J.R.S._, vol. x.). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ +CHAPTER XII+ THE ORIGIN OF LONDON[3] “There Thames runs by beneath the wall, Where pass the merchant vessels all, From every land, both high and low, Where Christian merchants come and go.” TRISTRAM, _c._ 1175. Footnote 3: The substance of this chapter was read at the Society of Antiquaries about 1917, but it has not been printed before. _FIRST BRITISH CITIES._—Ancient cities were not planted down by an act of will, they sprang up on lines of communication as centres of control and commerce. On a geological map it appears that a chalk belt passes from Kent to Hampshire towards the south bank of the Thames. From the north bank another wide belt diverges to the north-east. The backbones of these chalk regions are the North Downs of Kent and the Chiltern Hills; they contain between them a long triangle of gravel drift and marsh flats through which the Thames flows to the sea. These downs, as we know to-day, when we find ourselves on them, are pre-eminently walking grounds, and they must have been the prehistoric ways of communication. “Primitive man traversed the ranges lengthways: in the valleys were forests almost impenetrable, whereas the backbone of each ridge would stand bald above the ocean of trees.” The oldest roads were “Ridge-ways.” On the high Wiltshire downs at, or near, a point where the southern system of downs converge, stands Stonehenge, and I cannot doubt that it was in some way conceived as being a centre and “capital” of the country. The Gauls recognised such a centre, or “omphalos,” near Chartres. Since writing this, I find that Sir C. Oman has said, “Britain must have had some focus corresponding to that for Gaul; possibly among the prehistoric monuments of Salisbury Plain.” Stonehenge, I may say in passing, is a monument of wrought stone set out with precision, and I cannot see how it can be earlier than about 500-700 B.C.