are those over which the
rough-bearded men, in hoods and leather coats, lean in the summer,
watching the citizens disporting themselves in the Moorfields, or in
winter sledging over the ice-pools of Finsbury. Not for mere theatrical
pageant do they carry those heavy axes and tough spears. Those bossed
targets are not for festival show; those buff jackets, covered with
metal scales, have been tested before now by Norsemen's ponderous swords
and the hatchets of the fierce Jutlanders.

In such castle rooms as antiquaries now visit, the Saxon earls and
eldermen quaffed their ale, and drank "wassail" to King Egbert or
Ethelwolf. In such dungeons as we now see with a shudder at the Tower,
Saxon traitors and Danish prisoners once peaked and pined.

We must imagine Saxon London as having three component
parts--fortresses, convents, and huts. The girdle of wall, while it
restricted space, would give a feeling of safety and snugness which in
our great modern city--which is really a conglomeration, a sort of
pudding-stone, of many towns and villages grown together into one
shapeless mass--the citizen can never again experience. The streets
would in some degree resemble those of Moscow, where, behind fortress,
palace, and church, you come upon rows of mere wooden sheds, scarcely
better than the log huts of the peasants, or the sombre felt tents of
the Turcoman. There would be large vacant spaces, as in St. Petersburg;
and the suburbs would rapidly open beyond the walls into wild woodland
and pasture, fen, moor, and common. A few dozen fishermen's boats from
Kent and Norfolk would be moored by the Tower, if, indeed, any Saxon
fort had ever replaced the somewhat hypothetical Roman fortress of
tradition; and lower down some hundred or so cumbrous Dutch, French, and
German vessels would represent our trade with the almost unknown
continent whence we drew wine and furs and the few luxuries of those
hardy and thrifty days.

In the narrow streets, the fortress, convent, and hut would be exactly
represented by the chieftain and his bearded retinue of spearmen, the
priest with his train of acolytes, and the herd of half-savage churls
who plodded along with rough carts laden with timber from the Essex
forests, or driving herds of swine from the glades of Epping. The churls
we picture as grim but hearty folk, stolid, pugnacious, yet honest and
promise-keeping, over-inclined to strong ale, and not disinclined for a
brawl; men who had fought