There would come a time in this first London when a small boy would say to his mother: "Tell me about Rome!"
And she would sit facing the broad Thames, talking of Italy as a homesick woman in Winnipeg might talk of England:
"Do you see those galleys coming up under the bridge like water beetles? They come from Ostia—from Rome. They bring soldiers and—sometimes people go home in them! Yes, dear, perhaps when you grow up you too will go. The sun always shines there, and it is seldom cold as it is here. When your father was a little boy like you..."
So the tale would go on.
Then I see the market-place, the marvellous mixture of race which Rome drew to her cities: the dark Iberian soldier pressed into service for duty on the Wall, the Gaul, the German, the negro, the merchants with their wares, the amber from the Baltic, the pearls, the perfumes from the East, the brown fingers holding out gold chains as the Roman ladies go by....
What chatter of a six months old scandal as the women walk to the baths; what discussion of Rome's latest coiffure, her newest pin, her smartest sandal! At the docks the creak of timber and the straining of a released rope, the "one, two, three" as the oarsmen dip their great blades in the Thames; and a galley goes home with letters to Cæsar from the Governor of London.
Londinium Augusta! There is nothing between her and Verulamium but a straight road through the forest, then another road, more forests, and proud Camulodunum on its hill. Three fortified islands in a green sea. So England takes shapes out of the mists of Time; so London begins.
And I like to think, to round off the picture, that, on a cold night of winter, when brittle green stars glitter in the sky like glass, some grey old wolf creeps to the edge of the Hampstead woods and licks his jaws as he looks towards the first lights of London. Then he yawns and blinks his eyes as a dog blinks and looks away from something he does not understand. So he trots softly among the trees with the instinct that things are different; that—something has happened to the Hill!