Some modern historians, Mr. Loftie, for instance, deny the existence of the Langbourne altogether. ’Stow says that the Langbourne rose in Fenchurch Street and ran down Lombard Street. It does not seem to have occurred to him that the course indicated is up hill,’ Mr. Loftie objects. But Fenchurch Street was then, as it is now, considerably higher than the outfall of the Langbourne into the Thames, and what do we know of the then levels of the streets through which it was said to have run? Upwards of thirty feet under the present level of Lombard Street Roman remains have been found, and the Langbourne, as we know from various documents, was covered in as early as the latter part of the twelfth century, a time when building increased rapidly under Fitz-Alwyn, the first Mayor of London; moreover, the fenny condition of Fenchurch Street is said to have been due to the overflowing of the Langbourne at its source. Mr. Loftie says that the original name of the Langbourne was Langford; but a ford implies a watercourse, and not a mere ditch or artificial trench, which, receiving the drainage of the immediate locality, fell into the Wallbrook, as Mr. Burt would have us believe. If the Langbourne never existed, whence did Langbourne Ward derive its name? Proceeding westward, we come to a much more important stream, namely, the Wallbrook. No more striking instance of the changes which Time will effect in the topographical aspect of a locality can be found than that which the disappearance of the Wallbrook has produced within the limits of its own course and in its surroundings. Where now a smooth expanse of asphalte paving covers firm ground (except where rendered treacherously dangerous by sewer-like railway tunnels, in which human beings are shot to and fro like so many rats enclosed in traps in a drain!), extending from Princes Street right across to the Mansion House, and to and down the street called Wallbrook, there, centuries ago, yawned a wide ravine with precipitous sides, at the bottom of which flowed the brook called the Wall-brook, because, rising in the upper fenny grounds of Moorfields, it entered the city through an opening in the wall, somewhere near the northern end of the present Moorgate Street. The brook, towards its southern termination, must have been of considerable width, for barges could be rowed up to Bucklersbury—a fact commemorated by Barge Yard, formerly a kind of dock, but now solid ground, opening into Bucklersbury. The width of the Wallbrook near its outfall was no doubt increased by tributaries, which, flowing from the opposite portion of the City, found an exit on the western bank. There is no doubt that there was a watercourse along the line of Cheapside; the fact is stated positively by Maitland. He says: ’At Bread Street corner, the north-east end, in 1595, one Thomas Tomlinson causing in the High Street of Chepe a vault to be digged, there was found at fifteen feet deep a fair