tant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit by
me, stiff as in life."

FOOTNOTES:

[11] "I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate."
(Ossian.)

CHAPTER XLVIII.

CANNON STREET.

London Stone and Jack Cade--Southwark Bridge--Old City Churches--The
Salters' Company's Hall, and the Salters' Company's History--Oxford
House--Salters' Banquets--Salters' Hall Chapel--A Mysterious Murder
in Cannon Street--St. Martin Orgar--King William's Statue--Cannon
Street Station.

Cannon Street was originally called Candlewick Street, from the
candle-makers who lived there. It afterwards became a resort of drapers.

London Stone, the old Roman _milliarium_, or milestone, is now a mere
rounded boulder, set in a stone case built into the outer southern wall
of the church of St. Swithin, Cannon Street. Camden, in his "Britannia,"
says--"The stone called London Stone, from its situation in the centre
of the longest diameter of the City, I take to have been a miliary, like
that in the Forum at Rome, from whence all the distances were measured."

Camden's opinion, that from this stone the Roman roads radiated, and
that by it the distances were reckoned, seems now generally received.
Stow, who thinks that there was some legend of the early Christians
connected with it, says:--"On the south side of this high street
(Candlewick or Cannon Street), near unto the channel, is pitched
upright a great stone, called London Stone, fixed in the ground very
deep, fastened with bars of iron, and otherwise so strongly set, that if
carts do run against it through negligence, the wheels be broken and the
stone itself unshaken. The cause why this stone was set there, the time
when, or other memory is none."

Strype describes it in his day as already set in its case. "This stone,
before the Fire of London, was much worn away, and, as it were, but a
stump remaining. But it is now, for the preservation of it, cased over
with a new stone, handsomely wrought, cut hollow underneath, so as the
old stone may be seen, the new one being over it, to shelter and defend
the old venerable one."

It stood formerly on the south side of Cannon Street, but was removed to
the north, December 13th, 1742. In 1798 it was again removed, as an
obstruction, and, but for the praiseworthy interposition of a local
antiquary, Mr. Thomas Malden, a printer in Sherborne Lane, it would have
been destroyed.

This most interesting relic of