The heavy barges, laden to the water’s edge, have come down from Oxfordshire and Wiltshire; observe the swans, the fishing-boats, and the swarm of watermen plying between stairs, for this is the highway of the City. Not Cheapside, or East Cheap, or Thames Street, or the Strand is the highway of the City, but the river. And as on a main road we pass the noble Lord and his retinue, on their war-horses, caparisoned and equipped with shining steel and gilded leather, and after him a band of minstrels or a company of soldiers; or a lady riding on her palfrey followed by her servants and her followers; so on the river we pass the stately barge of some great courtier, the gilded barge of the Mayor, the common wherry, the tilt-boat, the loaded lighter, and the poor old fishing-boat decayed and crazy. Look at the riverside houses. Yonder great palace, with its watergate and stairs and its embattled walls, is Fishmongers’ Hall. It is a wealthy company, albeit never one beloved of the people, whom they must supply with food for a good fourth part of the year. That other great house is Cold Harbour, of the first building of which no man knows. Many great people have lived in Cold Harbour, which, as you see, is a vast great place of many storeys, and with a multitude of rooms. Within there is a court, invisible from the river, though its stairs may be seen. Almost next to Cold Harbour is the “Domus Teutonicorum,” the Hall of the Hanseatic Merchants. What you see from the river is the embattled wall on the river side, one side of the Hall, some windows of the dormitories, stone houses built on wooden columns, also the great weighing-beam and the courtyard. The front of this fortress—for it is nothing less—contains three gates, viz. two small gates easily closed, and one great gate, seldom opened. You see that they have their own watergate and stairs. In everything they must be independent of the London folk, with whom they never mix if they can keep separate. The men live here under strict rule and discipline; they may not marry; they stay but a short time as a rule; and when they are recalled by the rulers of the great company they are allowed to marry. Here, from the south side of the river, we get the only good view of the church of St. Paul. ’Tis a noble Church: is there a nobler anywhere? If we consider how it stands upon a hill dominating the City and all around it, of what length it is, of what height, how its spire seeks the sky and draws the clouds, then when one realises these things one’s heart glows with pride at the possession of so great and splendid a church. See how it rises far above the houses on its south side! Was it by accident, think you, that the churches between the bank and the Cathedral, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Nicolas Cole Abbey, St. Benedict, and the others, were all provided with short square towers without steeples so as to set off the wondrous height of the Cathedral? Was