it by accident that on the west side of the Cathedral rose the spire of Blackfriars, and on the east the lesser spire of St. Augustine’s, making a contrast with the lofty proportions of the great church? In front of us is the ancient port once called Edred’s Hythe after the name of a former Wharfinger or Harbour Master or Port Captain; it was afterwards called Potter’s Hythe and later Queen Hythe, because King John gave it to his mother Queen Eleanor, which name it still retains. The port is square, and open on one side to the river; there are never any storms to wreck the shipping within. It is now filled with ships, chiefly of the smaller kind, because the larger craft cannot pass through the Bridge. For this reason Billingsgate long surpassed Queenhithe in the number and importance of its ships and the magnitude of its trade. However, at Queenhithe they are busy. The cranes wheeze and grunt as they turn round; carriers with bales and sacks upon their backs toil unceasingly. All round the quay runs a kind of open cloister with an upper storey on pillars: this is the warehouse of the Harbour. [Illustration: _Grove and Boulton._ A SOUTH-EAST VIEW OF LONDON BEFORE THE DESTRUCTION OF ST. PAUL’S STEEPLE BY FIRE, A.D. 1560] The earliest harbour, whose mouth we passed just now, is an insignificant stream; one cannot understand how it could ever be a harbour for ships. It was once, however, a full and deep stream running rapidly down its valley, and sometimes swollen by rains. It drained Moorfields, and half a dozen rivulets joined together to make the brook, but when the ditch was dug round the wall, the brook fell into the ditch, and although a culvert was cut in the wall for the surplus water to pass down the old bed, little flowed through, and the Walbrook was only kept up as a stream by two or three springs in the northern part of the City.