Many of my hearers can imagine far better than I, the look that London must have had in Alfred's and Canute's days.[3] I have not, indeed, the least idea myself what its buildings were like, but certainly the groups of its shipping must have been superb; small, but entirely seaworthy vessels, manned by the best seamen in the then world. Of course, now, at Chatham and Portsmouth we have our ironclads,--extremely beautiful and beautifully manageable things, no doubt--to set against this Saxon and Danish shipping; but the Saxon war-ships lay here at London shore--bright with banner and shield and dragon prow,--instead of these you may be happier, but are not handsomer, in having, now, the coal-barge, the penny steamer, and the wherry full of shop boys and girls. I dwell however for a moment only on the naval aspect of the tidal waters in the days of Alfred, because I can refer you for all detail on this part of our subject to the wonderful opening chapter of Dean Stanley's History of Westminster Abbey, where you will find the origin of the name of London given as "The City of Ships." He does not, however, tell you, that there were built, then and there, the biggest war-ships in the world. I have often said to friends who praised my own books that I would rather have written that chapter than any one of them; yet if I _had_ been able to write the historical part of it, the conclusions drawn would have been extremely different. The Dean indeed describes with a poet's joy the River of wells, which rose from those "once consecrated springs which now lie choked in Holywell and Clerkenwell, and the rivulet of Ulebrig which crossed the Strand under the Ivy bridge"; but it is only in the spirit of a modern citizen of Belgravia that he exults in the fact that "the great arteries of our crowded streets, the vast sewers which cleanse our habitations, are fed by the life-blood of those old and living streams; that underneath our tread the Tyburn, and the Holborn, and the Fleet, and the Wall Brook, are still pursuing their ceaseless course, still ministering to the good of man, though in a far different fashion than when Druids drank of their sacred springs, and Saxons were baptized in their rushing waters, ages ago."