diverted from Tyburn Lane, and instead of going to Westminster in order to ford the Thames, it turned to the left, along the modern Oxford Street and Holborn, and, entering the City at Newgate, went on to the bridge. Only a small part of the road still bears the ancient name, but that any of it does so is a most interesting and significant fact. “We may conclude, therefore, if we wish to do so, that in a sense Westminster is older than London itself. What name it was called by we know not; but the Romans certainly had a station here, as I have said, and the importance of the place before the making of London Bridge may have been considerable.” In course of time the river was embanked, and ran in a deeper channel; then the ford, as has been stated above, vanished, and the marshes were partly reclaimed, only pools remaining on both sides of the river--the Southwark pools remained till the beginning of this century. But Thorney, after the drying of the marsh, continued to be an island. On the north, the west, and the south sides it was bounded by streams; on the east by the Thames. If you will take the map, and draw a line through Gardener’s Lane across King Street to the river, you will be tracing the exact course of the rivulet which ran into the Thames and formed the northern boundary of the island; another line, down Great College Street, marks the course of a second stream; while a third line, down De la Hay and Prince’s Streets, joining the other two, marks the lie of a connecting canal called Long Ditch. It is interesting to walk along the narrow Gardener’s Lane, one of the few remaining old streets of Westminster, and to mark how the road presents a certain unmistakable look of having been the bed of a stream; it bends and curves exactly like a stream. The same thing may be imagined--by a person of imagination--concerning Great College Street. The island thus formed covered an area of four hundred and seventy yards long from north to south, and three hundred and seventy yards broad from east to west. At some time or other--after the disappearance of the ford--the Abbey precinct was surrounded by a wall. In the same way St. Paul’s, in the midst of the City, was surrounded by a wall with embattled gates. A portion of this wall is perhaps still standing. The wall was pierced by four gates. One of these was in King Street, where the rivulet crossed; one was at the east end of Tothill Street; a third was in Great College Street, and its modern successor still stands on the spot with no ancient work in it; the last was in New Palace Yard. In front of the riverside wall lived the population of Thorney,--the town of Westminster, such as it was,--decayed indeed since the deepening of the river: fisher-folk mostly, who plied their trade on the river. But of town or village, in the time of Edward the Confessor, there was little or none.