The old Norman keep of the Tower has changed but little in outward aspect since it was limned in the old illumination of the MS. of Charles of Orleans, some six centuries ago. The general features are the same, and even the little leaden roofs of the four turrets at the angles, appeared then much as they do to-day. No one has been able to inform me as to the period when the leaden tops first capped the masonry of this tower. Two great authorities on the history of the Tower—Professor Freeman and Mr Clark—have told us how Norman William, on crossing the Thames, found that London was protected on its landward side by a Roman wall—the defences of ancient Augusta—a wall strengthened by mural towers, and an external moat. Of these relics of ancient Augusta, a fragment is to be seen at the eastern end of the White Tower. According to both historians, the building of the White Tower was commenced in 1078. When a tramway was run from the river wharf, some years ago, to the base of the White Tower for the shipment of stores, the engineers had to excavate some 20 feet of solid masonry into the Norman keep, such was its huge strength and solidity. Freeman always writes with enthusiasm of the Tower—“the mighty Tower of London,” he loves to call it; and when he wrote of the Tower, he had the White Tower in his mind. Regarding the builders of the White Tower, Freeman quotes the following Latin text from Hearner’s “Textus Roffensis”—“Dum idem Gundulfus, ex praecepto Regis Wilhelmi Magni, prœesset operi magnae turris Londoniae, et hospitatus fuisset apud ipsum Ædmerum.” The name Tower, and not Castle, adds Freeman, belonged to the fortress of Gundulfus from the first.