Gradually, as a vision in a crystal clears and forms out of mist, I see a smaller, colder Rome standing with its marble feet in Thames water. I see rows of wood and red-tile houses running within the walls in straight lines like tents within a castrum; I see the marble capitals under our grey skies, the majestic circular sweep of the theatre, the white gleam of the Forum, the gates with their statues, the baths at the gates, the long straight streets crowded, noisy, varied. I see the shaggy Britons and the Gauls move to a side as the Roman troops come clattering over the stones, their helmets shining, swords at hips; the marvellous short sword that carved out an Empire as a girl might cut a cake. And the heart of this little English Rome, how did it beat? I imagine that it knew the enterprising business man opening up new markets, the enthusiastic soldier always dreaming of sending the Eagles north, the inevitable Phœnician with his galley at the docks and his shop somewhere in the city, the bad boy sent to colonial London to expiate, and women making the best of it, always three months behind Rome in fashion: wives and sweethearts who had followed their men into barbary. O, the homesickness and heroism of colonization! How many old men must have wept to see their careful vines wilt in the London clay; and I wonder if Londinium Augusta numbered among its inhabitants the optimistic gardener who bored his friends with a vision of olives in a neat Italian row! There would come a time in this first London when a small boy would say to his mother: "Tell me about Rome!" And she would sit facing the broad Thames, talking of Italy as a homesick woman in Winnipeg might talk of England: "Do you see those galleys coming up under the bridge like water beetles? They come from Ostia--from Rome. They bring soldiers and--sometimes people go home in them! Yes, dear, perhaps when you grow up you too will go. The sun always shines there, and it is seldom cold as it is here. When your father was a little boy like you..." So the tale would go on. Then I see the market-place, the marvellous mixture of race which Rome drew to her cities: the dark Iberian soldier pressed into service for duty on the Wall, the Gaul, the German, the negro, the merchants with their wares, the amber from the Baltic, the pearls, the perfumes from the East, the brown fingers holding out gold chains as the Roman ladies go by.... What chatter of a six months old scandal as the women walk to the baths; what discussion of Rome's latest _coiffure_, her newest pin, her smartest sandal! At the docks the creak of timber and the straining of a released rope, the "one, two, three" as the oarsmen dip their great blades in the Thames; and a galley goes home with letters to Cæsar from the Governor of London.