The Pleasures of England | Page 9

Arthurian blood in
us, that the richest fighting element in the British army and navy is
British native,--that is to say, Highlander, Irish, Welsh, and Cornish.
Content, therefore, (means being now given you for filling gaps,) with
the estimates given you in the preceding lecture of the sources of
instruction possessed by the Saxon capital, I pursue to-day our question
originally proposed, what London might have been by this time, if the
nature of the flowers, trees, and children, born at the Thames-side, had
been rightly understood and cultivated.
Many of my hearers can imagine far better than I, the look that London
must have had in Alfred's and Canute's days.[3] I have not, indeed, the
least idea myself what its buildings were like, but certainly the groups
of its shipping must have been superb; small, but entirely seaworthy
vessels, manned by the best seamen in the then world. Of course, now,
at Chatham and Portsmouth we have our ironclads,--extremely
beautiful and beautifully manageable things, no doubt--to set against
this Saxon and Danish shipping; but the Saxon war-ships lay here at
London shore--bright with banner and shield and dragon prow,--instead
of these you may be happier, but are not handsomer, in having, now,
the coal-barge, the penny steamer, and the wherry full of shop boys and
girls. I dwell however for a moment only on the naval aspect of the
tidal waters in the days of Alfred, because I can refer you for all detail
on this part of our subject to the wonderful opening chapter of Dean
Stanley's History of Westminster Abbey, where you will find the origin
of the name of London given as "The City of Ships." He does not,

however, tell you, that there were built, then and there, the biggest
war-ships in the world. I have often said to friends who praised my own
books that I would rather have written that chapter than any one of
them; yet if I had been able to write the historical part of it, the
conclusions drawn would have been extremely different. The Dean
indeed describes with a poet's joy the River of wells, which rose from
those "once consecrated springs which now lie choked in Holywell and
Clerkenwell, and the rivulet of Ulebrig which crossed the Strand under
the Ivy bridge"; but it is only in the spirit of a modern citizen of
Belgravia that he exults in the fact that "the great arteries of our
crowded streets, the vast sewers which cleanse our habitations, are fed
by the life-blood of those old and living streams; that underneath our
tread the Tyburn, and the Holborn, and the Fleet, and the Wall Brook,
are still pursuing their ceaseless course, still ministering to the good of
man, though in a far different fashion than when Druids drank of their
sacred springs, and Saxons were baptized in their rushing waters, ages
ago."
[Footnote 3: Here Alfred's Silver Penny was shown and commented on,
thus:--Of what London was like in the days of faith, I can show you
one piece of artistic evidence. It is Alfred's silver penny struck in
London mint. The character of a coinage is quite conclusive evidence
in national history, and there is no great empire in progress, but tells its
story in beautiful coins. Here in Alfred's penny, a round coin with
L.O.N.D.I.N.I.A. struck on it, you have just the same beauty of design,
the same enigmatical arrangement of letters, as in the early inscription,
which it is "the pride of my life" to have discovered at Venice. This
inscription ("the first words that Venice ever speaks aloud") is, it will
be remembered, on the Church of St. Giacomo di Rialto, and runs,
being interpreted--"Around this temple, let the merchant's law be just,
his weights true, and his covenants faithful."]
Whatever sympathy you may feel with these eloquent expressions of
that entire complacency in the present, past, and future, which
peculiarly animates Dean Stanley's writings, I must, in this case, pray
you to observe that the transmutation of holy wells into sewers has, at
least, destroyed the charm and utility of the Thames as a salmon stream,
and I must ask you to read with attention the succeeding portions of the
chapter which record the legends of the river fisheries in their relation

to the first Abbey of Westminster; dedicated by its builders to St. Peter,
not merely in his office of cornerstone of the Church, nor even
figuratively as a fisher of men, but directly as a fisher of fish:--and
which maintained themselves, you will see, in actual ceremony down to
1382, when a fisherman still annually took his place beside the Prior,
after having brought in a salmon for St. Peter, which was carried in
state down the middle of the refectory.
But as I refer