them, Arthur fades into intangible vision:—this much, however, remains to this day, of 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.[1] 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,
- ↑ 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."
