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was occasioned by a calamity which had proved nearly fatal to the Roman power in Britain. In the year 61, Suetonius Paullinus, having pushed his conquests through the British states for two years, with a continued series of success, formed a plan of reducing Anglesea; when, by turning his back upon the conquered provinces, he afforded an opportunity for a general revolt. Boadicea, the brave but injured queen of the Iceni, headed the insurgents. Camalodunum and Verulam were taken by general assaults, and every thing was laid waste with fire and sword. "Suetonius (says Tacitus) undismayed by "this disaster, marched through the heart of the country, as far as London, a place not dignified with the name of a colony, but the chief residence of merchants, and the great mart of trade and commerce. At that place he "meant to fix the seat of war; but, reflecting on the scanty numbers of his little army, and the fatal rashness of Cerealis, he resolved to quit that station, and by giving up one post, to secure the rest of the province. "Neither supplications, nor the tears of the inhabitants, "could induce him to change his plan. The signal for "the march was given. All who chose to follow his "banners were taken under his protection. But of "all those who, on account of their advanced age, the "weakness of their sex, or the attractions of their situa"tion, thought proper to remain behind, not one escaped "the rage of the barbarians." (Tacitus, Annal. l. xiv. c. 32, 33. The number massacred by the British army under Boadicea, in the three places, amounted to at least seventy thousand!

The ancient course of the Walls has been traced as follows:-They began with a fort near the present site of the Tower; continuing along the Minories and the back of Houndsditch, across Bishopsgate Street, in a straight line to Cripplegate; then turned southward by Crowder's-well Alley to Aldersgate; thence by the back of Bull-and-Mouth Street to Newgate; and again along the back of the houses on the east side of the Old Bailey to Ludgate; soon after which it probably finished with another fort, near what was lately the King's printing house in Blackfriars; whence another wall ran near the са

river side, along Thames Street, back to the fort on the eastern extremity. The walls were three miles, and a hundred and sixty-five feet in circumference, guarded at proper distances by fifteen lofty towers; some of which remained till within these few years. The walls, composed alternately of layers of flat Roman brick and flagstone, are supposed, when perfect, to have been twentytwo feet high; and the towers forty in number. London Wall, running from Broad Street to Coleman Street, was, till very lately, the most entire part remaining; but since the recent improvements in Moorfields, perhaps the greatest portions of the ancient walls are to be found in Sea-coal Lane, Skinner Street, and near the Broadway, Ludgate Hill.

The burial places for the dead, which in the Roman cities were constantly without the walls, were in what have been since called Spital and Goodman's Fields.

To enumerate all the Roman remains, whose discovery seem in some measure to have marked out the ancient condition of the city, would be endless. When it was rebuilding, after the fire of 1666, they were found every where. Mr. Conyrs, an apothecary, and great collector of antiquities, gave the labourers, who dug the foundations after that event, encouragement to save for him whatever they might find. From the north-east corner of St. Paul's, Fleet Ditch, and Goodman's Fields, he procured a vast quantity of Roman coins, pottery, and utensils, but so mixed with articles of other and later periods, as almost to confound inquiry. At the east end of St. Paul's were found pieces of green serpentine and porphry, such as were used in Edward the Confessor's monument at Westminster; bone, or ivory pins, glass beads, heifers' horns, and Roman vessels of earth; and between Fleet Gate and Holborn Bridge, figures of the Roman household gods, mixed with seals of the Norman period, coins of Vespasian, with Judea capta on the reverse, spur-rowels, keys, daggers, jettons, or churchcounters, and a coin of Julius Cæsar.

While treating on the history of Roman London, we must not forget that curious remnant of antiquity, fixed at present close under the south wall of St. Swithin's church,

Cannon Street, called London Stone. It has by some been supposed of British origin; a sort of solemn boundary, or some other object probably of a religious nature, which, through every change and convulsion of the state, has been preserved with reverential care. It formerly stood nearer to the centre of the street, was placed deep in the ground, and strongly fixed with bars of iron. It is first mentioned in the reign of Ethelstan, king of the West Saxons; and has been usually viewed by our antiquaries as a miliary stone, from which the Romans began the computation of their miles: a conjecture which seems very reasonable, not only from the discovery of the Roman road, after 1666, running directly to this stone from Watling Street, but from the exact coincidence which its distance bears with the neighbouring stations mentioned in Antonine's Itinerary; the principal of whose journies either begin or end with London. Its situation, in regard to Roman London, was nearly central.

On the establishment of the Heptarchy, or the seven Saxon kingdoms in Britain, London was the capital of the kingdom of the East Saxons, or Essex; when it again rose into consequence as a commercial town. When the Saxon kingdoms were united into one monarchy under Egbert, London did not immediately hold the first rank; Winchester, Canterbury, and York, being deemed of higher consideration, till the time of Alfred the Great, who constituted London the capital of all England.

At the time of the conquest of England by the Normans, London was a place of great wealth and power; and its civil government and privileges, as they existed under the Saxons, were confirmed by a charter of William the Conqueror. The immediate successors of William alternately harassed the city with their usurpations and lawless acts, and soothed it with new charters to confirm its old privileges, or grant new ones, till at length the civil government of London took a form very little different from that by which it is at present administered. The title of Portreve was lost in that of Bailiff, Shirereve, or Sheriff, and afterwards the office of Mayor was given to the chief magistrate, derived from the Norman language, and the

municipal power became gradually vested in the citizens uncontrouled by the court.

In the reign of Henry I. London obtained a most important grant by the annexation of the county of Middlesex to its jurisdiction, with a power of appointing a Sheriff of that county from among themselves. This was done to prevent its being any longer an asylum for culprits, who, having fled from London, lived there in open defiance of those whom they had injured. Before the grant of this charter, London appears to have been entirely subject to the arbitrary will of the king; but the liberties of the citizens being now guarded by so strong a fence, they endeavoured to secure their customs by converting them into written laws; and the several bodies professing the arts and mysteries of trade, were now strengthened by being formed into companies. The king, however, reserved the power to himself of appointing the Portreve and chief officers of the city; and though the citizens at this day make their election of their Mayor and Sheriffs, yet these officers are presented to the crown for its approval; the Mayor to the Lord Chancellor, and the Sheriffs to the Cursitor Baron of the King's Exchequer.

In the reign of Edward I. we find the city divided into twenty-four wards, as at this day, and the magistrate of each of which had the ancient Saxon title of Alderman. Each ward chose also some of the inhabitants as common council men, who being sworn into their office, were to be consulted by the aldermen: and their advice followed in all public affairs relative to the City.

About this time the houses were mostly built of wood, and thatched with straw or reeds, which was the occasion of frequent fires; and the city was supplied with water by men who brought it in carriages from the Thames, and from the brooks which ran through many of the principal streets. Thus the river of Wells, so called from many springs or wells uniting to supply its stream, arose in the north-west part of the city, and ran into Fleet Ditch, at the bottom of Holborn Hill. This small river, or brook, supplied several water-mills, and at length from thence obtained the name of Turn-mill Brook.

The Oldbourn, [Holborn, which arose where Middle Row now stands, and flowed down the hill, also fell into Fleet Ditch; and a few houses on its banks were called a village, and distinguished (as early as 1086) by the name of Holborn. While the Fleet ran down Fleet Street, and also fell into Fleet Ditch.

Wall-brook entered the city through the wall between Bishopgate and Moorgate, and after many turnings, emptied itself into the Thames at Dowgate.

The brook Langbourn rose near the east end of Fenchurch Street, where, mixing with the soil, it rendered it marshy; but ran from thence with a swift current to Sherborne Lane, and then dividing into several rills, was lost in the Wall-brook on Dowgate Hill.

The springs from whence all these streams arose were pretty numerous, aud several of them at their source formed deep ponds; particularly there was a large pond in Smithfield, supplied by its own spring; and near Cripplegate a deep and dangerous pool, formed by Crowder's Well.

At length, the citizens being deprived of their usual supplies of water from the above brooks, by the encroachments of buildings, and other ways, water was brought from six springs in the town of Tybourn, by a leaden pipe of a six-inch bore, which was made to supply leaden cisterns castellated with stone. The first and largest of these conduits was erected in West-cheap, in the year 1285, and afterwards the number of these conduits were increased to about twenty. Mr. Stow informs us that it was customary for the Lord Mayor, accompanied by the Aldermen and principal citizens on horseback, to visit the heads from whence the conduits were supplied, on the 18th of September, when they hunted a hare before dinner, and a fox after it, in the fields near St. Giles's.

Till this time the Londoners had been almost entirely supplied with fuel from the woods in their neighbourhood; but the use of sea-coal now became very frequent, particularly among the brewers, dyers, and other trades that required large fires. The complaints of the nobility and gentry, however, appear to have occasioned more than one proclamation to forbid its use; but the annual produce of