On the contrary, the note of the approach to London nowadays from the Lower Thames is a note peculiarly and strongly modern. It is as though the abnormal expansion of our perilous Industrialism in the last hundred and fifty years had not only conquered but obliterated the eighteen centuries from which it suddenly arose. Here and there an odd survival left remaining of deliberate purpose serves but to emphasise the capture of the Lower Thames by that crazy mechanical giant so recently born and already so blind and old. You have the noble front of Greenwich, you have the charming little “mail” opposite, you have, most distinctive, perhaps, of all the survivals upon the river, the Fort of Tilbury. Save for these a huge and hardly national commerce, plainly suffering the domination of a few, has eaten up the scene of Thames-side and marks it more and more as one comes in through the outlying miles until one is relieved by older, dingier, and more gracious things near the heart of the whole business in the Pool. It seems unjust to pass, with no more than a mention, that lovely little isolated relic at Tilbury. Here was for centuries the natural gate, the military defence of the port. When the range of ordnance was not much more than hailing distance, no defences could be thought of upon the broadening water of the Hope, still less in the funnel of the Sea-reach. But Tilbury, standing over against Gravesend, defended the first point at which the river had narrowed sufficiently to be commanded by batteries from the shore. In the earliest map of this point (which is preserved in the Admiralty) one may trace the way in which the river was closed. There ran out from the northern bank, pointing somewhat downstream, a sort of barrier. We have no indication of its structure. A few piles would have been sufficient to prevent a passage and to canalise traffic into the open space that was left in the midst of the stream; for this space was not left free, as we might have supposed, just under the guns of the fort, but at a range which seems upon the drawing to be about 250 yards. Whether a corresponding permanent work existed upon the Gravesend shore I am ignorant, but it was obviously easy to emplace guns there when they might be needed. Meanwhile Tilbury, with its continual preparation for arms and as continual innocence of them, with its one chief historic memory of the Armada, remains the most perfect relic of the past upon all the stretch of the river. The swamped land round about has defended it and isolated it, and that great regard for the old things of the nation which is a virtue to be proud of has saved it from decay.