Westward of London we turn backward, and endeavour to obtain a view of that ancient neighbourhood as it looked when the Roman city stood upon the hill; and the Strand, as it is still called, was a low, waste, and reedy shore, over which the tide came and went, and rocked the tufted reeds which waved over many a surrounding acre. Something like what it was in ancient days may yet be seen in those reedy and willowy inlets above the Red House at Battersea; and could we have stood and looked across the river while the spot on which Westminster now stands was an island, covered with thorns, and down to the water edged with green flags and rushes, we should have seen, far below what was called the Long Ditch (where the river divided, beside a low, lonely shore, on which the waves went lapping and surging, as they still do about those dreary bends that skirt the marshes of Woolwich), the fisherman in his coracle, the only figure that moved beside the sedgy margin of that mastless river, over which the piping of the tufted plover might then have been heard. [Illustration: ROMAN REMAINS, FOUND IN THAMES-STREET.] Turning to the ancient city, Erkenwin the Saxon first appears with his boasted descent from Wodin, the terrible god of battle, conquers the remnant of the ancient Britons, tramples upon their standard of the red dragon, and plants the banner of the white horse upon the rude fortifications of their capital. After many convulsions we see the kingdoms of the Octarchy overturned by Egbert, the first king of all the Saxons; and in some old hall, with its low stunted pillars and heavy vaulted roof (centuries ago levelled to the earth), we behold him seated gravely with his witenagemot, or assembly of wise men, deliberating upon the best means of repelling the incursions of the Danes. Under the reign of Ethelwulf the city is plundered by the stormy sea-kings and their fearless followers. We next see the army of Alfred hovering between the outskirts of the city and the foot of Highgate-hill, and protecting the old Londoners while they gather in their harvest; for Hastings, with his ivory horn swung to his baldric, was encamped with his Danish army beside the river Lea, and Alfred had thrown himself like a shield between the city and its enemies. We behold Etheldred the Unready escape into Normandy, and Sweyn, king of Denmark, passes the low-browed archway which leads into the capital. The old grey wall which stretched beside the Thames, where wharves and warehouses now stand, is defended by Edmund Ironside and his followers against Canute the Dane, and ships bearing the banner of the black raven are moving below the rude bridge, which at that early period stretched over into Southwark. Harold, the last king of the Saxons, next crosses that old bridge, in the sunset of an autumnal evening, on his way to the fatal field of Hastings; and when we again look upon those ancient streets they are filled with Norman