It may be necessary to note here that some excellent authorities, finding certain traces of Roman law and customs existing in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, have formed the opinion that such laws were relics of the Roman occupation. It would be interesting if we could accept this view, just as if, for example, we could say that Paternoster Row was so named by the Romans. But, as I shall have to point out a little further, the origin of such usages is obvious without any recourse to the revival of laws dead and buried centuries before; if, indeed, they ever existed among people whose very language had wholly died out and been forgotten. It is, to say the least, unlikely that a continuity should exist in this respect, while the language in which it must have been preserved, orally, if not in records, died out and left not a trace even in a local name. [Illustration: BRONZE PIN WITH CHRISTIAN EMBLEMS (ROMAN).] I had written so far when I received Mr. Gomme's very interesting volume on the Governance of London. I greatly regret to say I cannot make his views fit with most of the facts I have endeavoured to put into chronological order above. For example, Roman London, when walled, was a Christian city. When the Saxons had held it from about 457 to 609, it was, we know, a heathen city, and twice afterwards returned to the worship of Woden and Thor. Is this compatible with the survival of a Roman constitution? Or, again, is there any London custom or law which might not have come to it from the cities of Flanders and Gaul more easily than after the changes and chances of two or three centuries? This is not the place to discuss these and other similar questions, and I for one will be extremely glad if Mr. Gomme can prove his point in the face of so much which seems to tell against him.