At what remote period of time the spot on which London now stands was first peopled can never be known. A few rude huts peering perchance through the forest-trees, with grassy openings that went sloping downwards to the edge of the Thames, where the ancient Briton embarked in his rude coracle, or boat made of wicker and covered with the hides of oxen,--a pile of rugged stones on the summit of the hill which marked the cromlech, or druidical altar, and probably stood on the spot now occupied by St. Paul's, and which nearly two thousand years ago was removed to make room for the Roman temple dedicated to Victory--was, from all we know of other ancient British towns, the appearance of London soon after the period when the old Cymri first landed in England, and called it the "Country of Sea-Cliffs." We next see it through the dim twilight of time occupied by the Romans. Triumphal arches and pillared temples and obelisks look down upon the streets of the Roman city. Then comes Boadicea thundering at the head of her revengeful Britons in her war-chariot: we hear the tramp of horses and the dealing of heavy blows; see the tesselated pavement stained with blood; behold pale faces upturned in the grim repose of death; then many a night of darkness again settles upon the streets of the old city. [Illustration: ROMAN HYPOCAUST, THAMES-STREET.] But deep down it is rich in Roman remains; far below the invading legions tramped, upheaving the victorious eagles above the dim old tesselated pavements; for London has its Pompeii and Herculaneum. Unnumbered generations have trampled into dust its splendour, even as our own glory may one day be mingled in the urn that holds the ashes of empires. Crushed Samian ware, a rusted demi-god, a headless hero, whose very memory has perished; the coins of conquerors, whose features time and decay have corroded, and whose mere names (without a good or evil deed to tell how they came there,) are just catalogued in the "lots" of history; these are the mouldering remains of conquest, lying as far beneath our feet as we in intellectual arts have towered above their former possessors. We belong to the future, as they do to the present; and when we perish, our glory will be found lettered in every corner of the rounded globe. The finger of the shattered giant will be picked up in the remotest continent, and unborn generations will sigh, as they exclaim, "Here lies a fragment of the once mighty England that gave us life."