LONDON is the name of an ever-widening tract of country covered by the buildings of a city already so large that it is equalled by no other in the world. We may even doubt if any city of the past was so great. Its population is known to a unit; and as there is no such trustworthy information to be had about any ancient city, it is impossible to compare London with , or , or . But as compared with , the nearest competitor, London is almost twice as large; and as compared with , it is three times as large. As compared with cities in our own islands, London exceeds or by more than three million inhabitants.[1] 

The growth of London has been very rapid in modern times. Those of us who can remember it for a dozen years are already unable to trace the older features of many places over which the resistless tide of building has crept. When the was placed in a little more than thirty years ago, there were only

As the houses advance, the natural features are obliterated. The shady lanes, the palings and orchards, the green meadows where we were wont to be thankful for a moment's respite from the din and bustle of the streets, are turned into villas first, then into rows of houses. The hollows are levelled up, the hills are levelled down. The brooks no longer run, the trees and the grass no longer grow. There is no more seed-time or harvest for the land the great city covers. The scanty vegetation which may still be found within its boundaries is artificial, for even the sky is invisible during a great part of the year. All seasons are alike to the thorough Londoner. The summer heat only drives him to the shady side; the winter wind does but make him call a cab. The railways, under the pretence of taking him farther and farther out of town, only bring the town farther into the country, and cover a larger district with villas and avenues which are merely mockeries of country villages and natural woods.

The London district, thus restricted, lies between two lines of heights, and is traversed by a winding river of considerable width. The northern range is the highest, rising at to 424 feet, and at to about twenty feet more. The southern range nowhere attains a greater elevation than 370 feet, but we may note that while and stand comparatively alone, Hill and are flanked by several minor heights, such as and. The northern range, too, differs from the southern in another particular: it does not fall to the level of the water at once; but between it and the lowest ground there is interposed a line of intermediate heights, some of them rising above 100 feet. It was on one of these minor hills that the original nucleus of London was placed. But in one important respect, its position was utterly different from what it now appears. When London was confined to the hill above the the water of a broad lagoon was stretched in front of it to the south, filling the valley toward the Surrey hills, and washing almost to their feet. Though and may even then have been dry ground, they were on the margin of a vast shallow lake, interspersed

One by one the little eyots became islands dotting the lagoon, one by one the marshes were embanked and became meadows; so that, when the Romans ran their great southern road across a bridge to ,

But there are other low-lying districts in London. represents the delta of what was, at a not very remote period, a tidal estuary. , flowing down from the wooded hills of and was wide and full. To the west also, an estuary filled what is now , and an island, which is first known in history as the Thorn-ey, was at its mouth. In the ornamental water, we trace the last remnant of an inlet from whose surface gradually rose into the daylight of modern history. Thickets may have given it the older name. Centuries before the western monastery had been raised to afford its sanctuary to human fugitives, the wild deer swam over to hide from the savage hunter. A skeleton found under the foundation of the in the new , tells of an age when antlered stags roamed through the forest, and when the men who slew them, slew them with weapons of stone.

Above that part of the which is represented by the flats of , flats only reclaimed in our own day, rose and rises the westernmost and highest of the low range of hills which I mentioned above. Each hill is separated from the next by a valley, through which a brook ran; and the whole range runs in an easterly direction in a line not quite parallel to the edge of the river, but so tending to the south that while is three-quarters of a mile inland, is on the bank. The westernmost rises to a height of 130 feet. We now call its northern slope , and the eastern : but these are all designations of the same eminence, which is divided from

Going eastward, we next ascend to the sandy plateau known in history as , although by right it should bear some other name. It falls short of the proportions of by more than forty feet, but seen from the lower lawns of it appears to rise somewhat abruptly, and no doubt before the levelling hand of modern man had been employed in rounding it, was steep, if not precipitous. Down to the last century it was covered by a barren heath, and its summit at the Edgware Road was almost flat. The southern edge approached very near the head of the little estuary of which I have spoken as being now . If we stand within and look due south over the only open ground we can now find on the whole hill, we can easily, if the day is clear, obtain an idea of the ancient geography of what is now the " West End." All the districts to the south, as far as the Thames, are on a much lower level. The nearest high ground we can descry is very far off. As the sun gleams on the roof of the , we recognise . At our feet is the river, shallow and wide-so shallow indeed, at times, that it is no mere tradition which affirms the existence of a ford at . On the right is the valley through which the took its course, and on the left, if we could strip off and , and the adjacent quarter as far as , we should be able to follow the windings of another stream. How entirely the face of nature has been altered may be seen in a moment if, when passing through towards , the

The course of the was carefully followed and mapped before it made its last appearance in daylight.[2]  Its source was in , not far from the " Swiss Cottage," on the first slopes of Thence it ran for a few hundred yards through the across the road at , between Place and , across the , and turning westward, under Madame Tussaud's, by to the foot of the of [3]  Thence it is easily traced to , for once overhung the left bank of the stream, and marks its windings for us. The brook ran nearly along , crossed , and reached at Gee's Court. To trace its further course we must follow the lowest levels of the ground as best we can through a labyrinth of lanes behind the fine houses in ; and tending a little to the west, through , across , by to , just behind the Grosvenor Gallery. and some more mews take us to , at the foot of Hay Hill. Thence we go through The Passage, whose hollow sounding pavement seems to betray the fact that the brook runs between the gardens of on the right and those of on the left. We are now very near, but the brook again

We shall be able to see more clearly when observing the geological structure of the London soil, that from the dense bed of clay which is, as it were, dammed up by this hill, most of the streams which cross the site of London take their rise; but its own surface, with the exception of two little rivulets which cross the Strandat Ivy Bridge, Adelphi, and at Milford Lane, Temple Bar -is smooth and unfurrowed. It rises ninety feet at Regent's Circus and eighty-five at Tottenham Court Road. Regent's Park occupies a kind of ridge between two slight depressions, west and east; and is backed up immediately on the north by Primrose Hill and Barrow Hill, spurs of . [4] The rose on the western side of this ridge, and on the eastern another brook, or rather river, wound along through steep banks, turning more and more to the south, until, as we descend Holborn Hill, it stops for the time our further progress. We are on the edge of the Fleet, the eastern boundary of our great west-central hill.

The Fleet [5]  has wholly disappeared now, but it was once a very prominent feature of London geography. Both it and the took their rise in the dense clay of the region just below , but while the took its course towards the west, the Fleet ran

At Battle Bridge, now King's Cross, the brook begins to enter the long valley from which it only emerges when the journey is over. High clay hills are on either side. One is crowned now by the walls of Coldbath

Ingenious as it is, this hypothesis will not suffice to explain all the discoveries of elephants along the shores of the and the Lea. There have been other discoveries also, to throw a light on the early condition of ; and the remains of a vast forest on this northern shore of the estuary, may occasionally be found at no great depth. The modern decline of the Fleet, from a river to a brook, and from a brook to a drain, may be in part accounted for, as well as the decline of the smaller streams already mentioned, by remembering how much trees do to

When the bourne emerges from behind the hills and turns into its tidal course, it becomes the Fleet. This end of our great west-central hill is now variously designated according to the side from which we view it. There is , Saffron Hill, Back Hill, Ely Place, Hatton Garden, Kirby Street, or Field Lane; but the brook preserves its characteristics to the end. The banks on the eastern side were, and are, so high that they have refused to submit to the greatest of modern obliterating agencies; and even the railway across has left at one or two points steep ascents like that long known as Break-neck Steps. Snow Hill has been abandoned for the Holborn Viaduct; and the whole district of Farringdon Street, which actually runs over the course of the old Fleet river, presents the inquiring geographer with a marvellous example of the power of modern engineers to disguise and change the natural appearance of a valley and a tidal estuary.

The first bridging of the Fleet must have been a serious matter. In Roman times the only direct road across it to our fourth hill, from High Holborn, that is, to , was by the Holborn Bridge. The street called led to it: and Snow Hill was the way up the opposite acclivity. When another bridge was made many centuries later, it was lower down. This was the Fleet Bridge, and the road which led to

The Fleet formed the western bulwark of London for hundreds of years: its existence must have been one of the chief inducements which brought about the first settlement on the hill above. There was no such stream westward for many miles, no creek or harbour with such high protecting banks and a tide which flowed so far inland. The Fleet was still navigable in the reign of . Ship Court and Seacoal Lane remained till lately to tell of the time when there was a natural haven, situated in immediate proximity to the city. Such a waterway must have been a protection in war as well as a commercial port in peace, and London, seated thus on a lofty hill, with, as we shall see, a smaller harbour in its very midst, and protected on one side by such a tidal estuary as the Fleet, and on the other by the Lea, was a place of natural strength, yet admirably adapted for purposes of commerce.

Our fourth hill, then, looked westward over the Fleet, and eastward over the Wall-brook. Of its real height and its form we know little. It was included within the second Roman wall, and there are places in it where the original surface is forty feet below the present level. Its level summit extends from the west front of St. Paul's to nearly the eastern end of Cheapside: where a valley, deep and winding like part of the Upper Hole-bourne, descended to the level of the Wall-brook.[9] 

This passage proves a few points which do not seem to have occurred to the majority of the historians of St. Paul's. If there were interments here we may be sure that this was not the site of a Roman city or fortress at the time those interments were made. Therefore this was not, as Milman and others have supposed, the hill on which the Pretorium stood. If it was a cemetery, it could not have been at the same period a fort. It may possibly have been a British burial-place, but is careful to say that the Roman urns lay, in some cases, deeper than the British graves; and there is nothing of any other interments earlier or deeper than those where Roman urns were intermixed. The passage, in short,

Another discovery has been mentioned. Camden tells us of the finding of " an incredible" quantity of skulls and bones of cattle, stags' horns, boars' tusks, and implements and vessels thought to be sacrificial. Apart from the implements there would be nothing so very incredible about this discovery. Bones and skulls and tusks have been found at other places in the valley. The implements are a puzzle. Were they of pottery, of metal, or of stone? Were they knives or arrow-heads? It is absurd to try to draw conclusions worth having from traditions like these. A kitchenmidden of any kind would answer sufficiently well to the description: and there is nothing positively conclusive against the bones being those of the elephants and bears of the glacial epoch. The Romans of a later time occupied the hill, as we shall see when we come to speak of Roman London. Meanwhile, we have only to note one other point relating to this hill, and then cross the to the next one. In Panyer Alley is a little monument familiar to every one, since Cruikshank sketched it for Hone, with an inscription as follows :

"When you have searched the city round Yet still this is the highest ground."

The height here is fifty-nine feet. But we find a slightly greater elevation on the neighbouring hill,-for the site of the " Standard " on Cornhill is sixty feet above sea-level-and where a free choice existed, we may suppose the higher of the two was the first inhabited. At the same time it is well to remember that our knowledge

The took its rise in the fens beyond, and flowing through a depression, still well marked, near Lothbury, passed under the site of the Church of St. Mildred's, in the Poultry, which during the middle ages was built on an archway over the brook. Thence it passed a little to the westward of the Mansion House and through a kind of ravine to a creek at . The present street called by its name runs very nearly parallel to the course of the stream.

On the eastern hill, if anywhere, there may have been an early British fort: that is, before the coming of the Romans. The situation, guarding a little port below, and guarded itself from danger on the west by the brook, is more suitable than that on the hill of St. Paul's, where the port formed by the mouth of the Fleet was more subject to inconvenient tides; and also, in all probability, to heavier winter floods. On the east was a wider valley, slightly sloping to the levels of the Lea, and without any high ground nearer than Barking.

Here, long before the coming of the Romans, the old Celtic chieftain of the district may have placed his fortified cattle pen. Behind him were densely wooded hills stretching beyond and to

The geological features of the London district have been the subject of anxious investigation. For my present purpose it will not be necessary to do more than describe the surface, merely premising that two deep borings, one made at Kentish Town, in the northern suburbs, and the other at the intersection of Oxford

The surface is very different in different places. In the north-western suburbs, for instance, and especially at Finchley, there are beds of glacial drift, rich in fossils. In some places again, as at Woolwich, are deep layers of peat. On the top of , which consists mainly of heavy clay, there is a capping of "Lower Bagshot" sand. As a general rule, however, the whole of the London district, north of the , is on a surface of clay, with here and there a superficial bed of alluvial gravel or of sand, of varying depth. The line of each of the brooks, which I have described above, is marked by a bed of surface clay. The summits of the hills are of more or less pure sand or gravel. Thus Campden Hill is sandy, while the lower part of Kensington and Holland Park are on clay; and in the whole district called South Kensington, down through , almost to the river's bank, there are patches of clay, of gravel, and of sand, intermixed in such a manner as to make it impossible to distinguish them. The eastern end, for example, of Cromwell Road, is on sand, the western end is on clay, as is the greater part of Earl's Court Road; though immediately beyond the sands crop up again.

The great " West Central " hill of which I have already said so much, is covered with alluvial gravel, the clay being, however, very near the surface. In the boring mentioned above, 22 feet are allowed for" alluvium, drift, &c."; but the figures are doubtful,[15]  and in most places a single 2 would represent better the depth of the gravel. By the shore of the along the Strand, and in the line of the Fleet along Farringdon Street, where there is not made earth there is clay. The steep ascent of is formed of a clay bank originally rising like a cliff, 40 feet above the river. The whole soil of the city is now made earth, and in places there are layers of ashes many feet in thickness. The depth of the soil varies from two causes; one, of course, being the comparative antiquity of the site; the other, the situation having been originally a hollow, now filled up, as along Broad Street and . The ancient surface of Mincing Lane, Gracechurch Street, and Lombard Street is generally found at a depth of 17 feet; but in Mark Lane it is 28 feet, and in Fenchurch Street 22 feet. In Leadenhall Street, which stands high, the old level is found at 9 feet 6 inches. A pavement was found at Lothbury and another at Bucklersbury, both in the valley of the , now filled up, at a depth of 40 feet. On the western hill found interments

The East End is more uniformly on clay than the West, especially near the river; but great beds of alluvial drift are found in several places. I have spoken already twice of the occasional discoveries of fossils in this superficial formation, and may illustrate them further by referring to the largest find of all, that made by near Ilford, a place beyond my limits, but on the same soil as many parts of London. Here, in what is called brick earth,[16]  a brown loam, much esteemed by market gardeners, which is found for the most part at low levels only and is often interbedded with gravel and sand, a large number of bones and teeth of various animals, extant or extinct, were collected. So various and remarkable are some of these remains that one might fancy the Zoo of the period was situated at Great Ilford. The list comprises the bison, musk sheep, Irish elk, beaver, lion, hyæna, bear, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, besides wolves, horses, oxen, pigs, mice, and such small animals in abundance, and, above all, not fewer than three distinct kinds of elephants. In this one "incredible" discovery, as Camden might have called it, there were the teeth of as many as a hundred different mammoths of this last kind (Elephas primigenius).

North of London, as I have already pointed out, the clay of Regent's Park used to give birth to the watercourses traced above; and though it is partially drained by the canal, and in other ways, it remains a deep and dense mass of very impervious character. This, the

On the south side the formation is very similar. , like , is of clay, but without its capping of Bagshot sand. The valley, as we descend towards the , is alluvial, the sand occurring rather more rarely than on the north bank. In many places there is peat, and signs of very recent watery action are-abundant. At the extreme east, near , the formation known as Thanet sands, and the Blackheath sands, and other lower tertiary beds appear; but they are beyond the limit of this book.

So far we have only observed the surface on which London has been built; but if we wish to know what lies below that surface, information is easily obtained. At the there is a large model, on a scale of 6 inches to a mile, showing the formation of the "London Basin" within an area of about 165 square miles; or from Turnham Green, on the west, to Barking, on the east; and from on the north, to Penge, on the south. It shows the strata down to the " Gault," which at the time the model was made, had only been touched in two borings, one already referred to, at Kentish Town, and the other at Crossness. Since then some lower .beds have been reached, but it is safe to say that the Gault underlies the

As an example of the variations of elevation in London, the following lists, giving the heights in feet as marked in the Survey maps, may be found useful. The first gives the levels along Oxford Street and the other streets in a line with it or nearly so from Shepherd's Bush in the west to Mile End in the east. The second gives the levels along a route from Regent's Park to the Crystal Palace:-

Such are the geological and geographical features of the site on which London has grown. To follow its growth we must look back to a period which may safely be placed near the beginning of the Christian era. The Roman general, Julius Cæsar, may or may not have visited the Llyndin on the lower . He was in Britain in B.C. 54, and it is not until a hundred and six years later that we meet with the first historical notice of London.

[1] Paris, 2,225,910 (1881). New York, 1,206,590 (1880). Glasgow, 511,532 (1881). Liverpool, 552,425 (1881). London, 3,832,441 (1881). In 1801, it was 958,863.

[2] J. G. Waller, in the 'Journal of the London and Middlesex Archaological Society,' vol. v. I have to thank Mr. Waller for much assistance in writing this chapter.

[3] St. Marylebone.For the history of St. Marylebone, see chapter xxi.

[4] It is probable that Primrose Hill and its companion, now crowned by a reservoir of the Middlesex Water Company, were, in part at least, artificial mounds. Tumuli existed in many places in the same district

[5] J. G. Waller, 'London and Middlesex Transactions,' iv. 97.

[6] Yet so completely have they been covered and disguised that Stow and others have been forced to invent an "Oldbourne," and to make it flow down Holborn Hill to account for a name which, even three centuries ago, had begun to lose its special appropriateness.

[7] We cannot afford to laugh at Bagford, or Conyers his informant. In a history of London remarkable for the number and excellence of its illustrative woodcuts, this charming theory is enunciated and defended. The volumes are undated, but bear internal evidence of being less than five years old.

[8] Some have thought "Lud " a reference to the assembly of the leod or leet in St. Paul's Churchyard. Both derivations are doubtful. See chapter xvii.

[9] This name is sometimes spelt with one 1, but the existence of the original Roman wall on its bank was not established till lately. " Walbrook," if wal or gael means a foreigner, could be taken as an early English reference to the port of Dowgate and the merchants who came to it; but the wall which overlooked it affords a better derivation. Geoffrey of Monmouth derives the name from Livius Gallus. In the Rot. Pat. Edward III . it is Walebrok.

[10] Wren's 'Parentalia,' p. 266, quoted in Murray's ' Handbook to St. Paul's,' p. 5, where this note comes after a general assertion that this was the site of the Roman pretorium. The interments dispose of this idea.

[11] Finsbury may be the borough or bury of Fin, but cannot possibly be derived from "fen." It was early called Vynesbury.

[12] Marked by Fenchurch; here there can be no difficulty.

[13] In 1876 I received a letter from the late distinguished antiquary, T. G. Godfrey Faussett, of Canterbury, in which the following passage occurred:- " Such as one hesitates about Celtic names, I have never doubted what it was that the Romans turned into Londinium-to wit Llyn-din-the lake fortress. No doubt you know both the words in Welsh, the latter now-a-days more usually ' dinas,' and common enough. Llyn you know is pronounced Lun, a sound which Roman lips could not make, and got over it how they could-sometimes with an o, sometimes with an i, sometimes with their u, pronounced oo. So you will find the Usk is Isca-Romney (Welsh, Rhymney) is Limenis, Ritupæ and Rutupiæ are used promiscuously, &c., &c. London was in those days emphatically a Llyndin, the river itself being more like a broad lake than a stream, and behind the fortress lying the 'great northern lake,' as a writer so late as Fitzstephen calls it, where is now Moorfields. I take it it was something very like an island, if not quite-a piece of high ground rising out of lake, and swamp, and estuary." No satisfactory explanation of " Thames " has ever been offered.

[14] I must refer the reader who wishes for further information to a 'Guide to the Geology of London,' by William Whitaker, B.A., F.G.S., which has been published by the authorities of the Geological Survey Office.

[15] Mr. Whitaker puts a ? to them.

[16] Whitaker, ' Geology of London,' p. 69.

[17] Whitaker.