From The Dublin University Magazine
LONDON.
A Dublin saunterer of antiquarian propensities pacing the flags in front of Christ church, or elbowing his troublesome way down the narrow defile called Castle street, can scarcely escape a certain sense of awe as he looks on the houses and the passengers, and darts a thought back through dim and troubled time till he strives to arrive at an idea of' the first inhabitants and the scene in which they played out their short parts.
Passing over the mysterious and weak race that preceded the Gaels, he fancies these last in their quaint garb going about their ordinary occupations, or rushing to their earth mounds and dykes to repel the fierce Northmen. Then pass before his mind's eye the successive races of different speech, and different garb, and different interests—the Danes, Dano-Celts, and the Anglo Normans, employed in fierce struggles with each other, and each looking on the events of his own times as paramount to all that ever agitated society till then. All now quiet and silent in the dust. The shopkeeper attending to his customers, the tippler stepping into the corner shop for a dram, and the carman smoking his pipe, and giving his beast a mouthful of hay, are as unconscious of any personal connection with the dead generations as if they had sprung full grown and furnished with clothing from the fat glebe of the neighboring Phoenix Park.
So would feel still more intensely an archaeologist on Tower Hill, or by the Fleet Ditch, or on London Bridge, if the ever hurrying and feverish crowd would allow him to concentrate his thoughts on anything.
How it should make the feelings of the most dried up anatomy of an archaeologist glow, when, throwing his thoughts nearly nineteen centuries back, he sees the mighty robber conducting his band, guarded by strong defences of bronze, and leather, and wood, to the bank of the then clear river, and preparing to invest and destroy that ill-armed but heroic body of brave men on the other side, who, in defence of their weak children, and loving and high-souled wives and daughters, will soon send many an armed and ruthless Roman soldier to shiver on the cold banks of Styx.
And what was the profit of all the plotting, and all the unjust warfare, waged by men single or in masses against those they considered their foemen? They shortened the career of their opponents, they shortened their own lives. They preferred a short and turbulent existence to the longer and quieter span intended for them, they passed away, and were either speedily forgotten, or remembered but to be cursed.
It is a bewildering occupation to a stranger to contemplate a map of London in order to acquire some distinct notion of the number and arrangement of the streets (an idea of the inhabitants is out of the question), to ponder how the countless multitude can be fed and clothed, and to reflect that if old mother earth should lose her fruit-bearing qualities for one year, how little would avail the beauty, the bravery, the wit, the ingenuity, the industry, and the intelligence of the three million inhabitants, to prevent the circuit of famed London from becoming a vast charnel-house.
Our earliest historians were the poets, these were succeeded by the romancers. Geoffry of Monmouth, translating the "Chronicle of Kings" brought from Brittany, informed the [{837}] people of the twelfth century that Brutus, great-grandson of Eneas, after many voyages and adventures, founded a town about where the Tower has long stood, and called it New Troy. This was afterward changed to Trinobantum. Lud, brother to Cassibelan, again gave it his own name—Caer Lud. Hence Ludstown softened to London. Other derivations for the city's name are not at all rare. From the Celtic words Leana, marsh or meadow; Linn, a pool; Lung, or Long, a ship; and Dunn, a fort, it is easy to make out the fort among the meadows, the fort of the pool, or the fort of the ships. The sister city, Dublin, is simply black pool.
As ancient Dublin occupied at first only the hill of which the castle occupies the south-eastern spur, so Tower Hill, Ludgate Hill, Cornhill, and Holborn Hill, formed the site of the original British Dun or Duns. Hence the most interesting portion of London to an antiquary must include those places of strength. But as the more easterly eminences have much longer ceased to be fashionable than our Fishamble and Essex streets, and the traditions of London literary characters from the time of Elizabeth date from regions further west, most writers choose to expatiate on the buildings that lie between Whitehall and Temple Bar, and on the remarkable personages and incidents connected with them. Charles Knight was unable to say his say concerning the modern Babylon in fewer than six royal octavo volumes, and the portly octavo lately put forth by Mr. Thornbury is concerned with a very small area of the city, Temple Bar being at its south-east angle, and the Strand, St. Martin's lane, Holborn, and Chancery lane its boundaries.