This man, this woman, and this child, on the top of that low hill that November day, who had been blown off the coast of Denmark, were the first human beings that had set foot on this soil, this country. Since that day alterations have taken place in that landscape. Since then great alterations have taken place on that hill. Among many changes, one of the most remarkable is that layer after layer of matter has accumulated on the hill, and it now rises to twice its former height. The stone, against which that half-naked savage reared his rude wattle hut, was not destroyed or carried away. It still occupies the same position as then. It is now covered with layers of deposit. It is on the same level as the day he landed; It stands in the same latitude and longitude. In the same latitude and longitude to-day, three hundred and ninety feet above that stone, blazes in the sun the gilded Cross of the Christian Cathedral of St Paul's! George Osborne's vision ended. He rose, stood by the window, looked out on London of to-day. CHAPTER II. A DREAM. He thought: Between that stone, covered up by the dust of centuries, marking the first spot where the foot of man had touched Britain, and that on which now the mightiest city of all time had been gathered, what cycles and revolutions of things and of thoughts! Here the rude barbarian, clad in skins, disfigured with paint, had knelt in worship before the sun, the tempest, the river, the winds. Here had come in time, pressed out of the East, the fire-worshipper and the Druid. Here men had bent the knee to every form of heathen god conjured up by the weird fertile brain of the North. Here Odin and Thor, in the heat of battle, when the death-blow came, had been implored to open the gates of immortality to the soul that yearned for Valhalla. Here had smoked the sacrificial garlanded bull, under the knife of mysterious priests of the sacred groves. Here had striven anarchy, bloodshed, rapine, pillage, and desolating invasions during century upon century of barbaric sway. While Phideas and Praxiteles marked the climax of Greek art, the half-clad native of these Thames islands was prowling along its banks in a condition as low as the North American savages of to-day.