and topography. For along its course, when Julius Cæsar invaded Britain, and for many centuries later, there ran a brook with precipitous banks. Upon the eastern bank stood the ancient wall, marking the western limit of Roman London, which found its eastern where the Tower now stands. It was not until centuries later that the wall extended to Ludgate Hill. How the surface has altered there and elsewhere in the City area during the last fifteen hundred years, may be seen in the Guildhall Museum. One of the treasures of that collection is a grand Roman mosaic found in situ in 1829, nineteen feet below the present level of the narrow street called Bucklersbury. Crossing the north end of Walbrook there stretches before us Queen Victoria Street, a noble thoroughfare, typical at once of the increasing needs of London traffic, of the increasing wealth of the City, and of the New London which is so fast sweeping Old London out of existence. The laudator temporis acti may lament over the destruction of streets rich in London memories, but inconveniently narrow for the requirements of London business; the man who believes that the Tudor times were the good old days' of English life-if he can be found outside the pages of fictionmay regret the destruction of City churches, from which the congregation has long departed, and of old houses, picturesque indeed, and beloved of the artist, but not at all adapted to modern requirements. It is certain that London has been by no means careful enough of her ancient monuments. Far too many have been recklessly swept away, and there is ample need for an official whose business it shall be to see that all really valuable historic buildings and sites shall be carefully preserved. But no one who knew London fifty years ago, and who knows it to-day, will deny that such streets as Cannon Street and Queen Victoria Street, the Holborn Viaduct, and Shaftesbury Avenue, Northumberland Avenue and the Thames Embankment, are not only great architectural adornments to the capital, but were also absolutely necessary, if life in London was to be tolerable.

6

As we pass along Queen Victoria Street evidences of the commercial prosperity abound in the lofty and handsome buildings, and in the throngs of vehicles in the roadway and of foot-passengers upon the side walks. As the eye lights upon the handsome tower of St. Mary Aldermary, we see one of Wren's fine towers, and we recall the fact that not only is the building a good specimen of church architecture, but that also in the register of the church is preserved the signature of John Milton. The Mansion House Station, on the Underground Railway, reminds us that vast numbers of Londoners are daily carried about their avocations, not as in New York along a railway which disfigures great thoroughfares, but through the less, obtrusive if somewhat sulphurous tunnels that have cost such large sums to construct. We pass the Civil Service Co-operative Stores, one of the earliest of the great ready-money trading-houses which now abound in London. A short distance beyond stands a splendid building, the home

and centre of one of the greatest religious movements of this century, the British and Foreign Bible Society. In these convenient premises the officers and committee carry on the great work, begun in 1804, of circulating the Word of God in nearly 300 of the languages spoken by men.

Making our way beyond the office of the Times, and the large stations

connected with the Chatham and Dover Railway, we reach one of the finest prospects that London can boast, and one. probably not surpassed amongst the capitals of Europethe Thames Embankment. This great work was undertaken by the Metropolitan Board of Works, and completed in 1870. It consists of a solid granite wall, running along the north bank of the Thames, eight feet thick, forty feet high, and seven thousand feet long, extending from Blackfriars to Westminster Bridge. The roadway is one hundred feet wide, and the footways on either side are planted with trees. By this great engineering feat land varying in width from two hundred and fifty to four hundred feet has been reclaimed from the river, amounting in all to about thirty acres, and a roadway, added to London which seen either by daylight or when illuminated by the long curving rows of gas lamps, presents a spectacle of the highest interest and beauty. It cost no less than £2,000,000, a sum raised partly by rates, partly by coal and wine dues, and partly by the sale of redeemed land.

THE VICTORIA EMBANKMENT.