d House to the Bank, near the scite
of Ranelagh, still remains; and I have surveyed it more than once. At
ordinary low water, a shoal of gravel, not three feet deep, and broad
enough for ten men to walk abreast, extends across the river, except
on the Surrey side, where it has been deepened by raising ballast.
Indeed, the causeway from the south bank may yet be traced at low
water; so that this was doubtless a ford to the peaceful Britons,
across which the British army retreated before the Romans, and across
which they were doubtless followed by Caesar and the Roman legions.
The event was pregnant with such consequences to the fortunes of these
islands, that the spot deserves the record of a monument, which ought
to be preserved from age to age, as long as the veneration due to
antiquity is cherished among us. Who could then have contemplated that
the folly of Roman ambition would be the means of introducing arts
among the semi-barbarous Britons, which, in eighteen hundred and forty
years, or after the lapse of nearly sixty generations, would qualify
Britain to become mistress of Imperial Rome; while one country would
become so exalted, and the other be so debased, that the event would
excite little attention, and be deemed but of secondary importance?
Possibly after another sixty generations, the posterity of the savage
tribes near Sierra Leone, or New Holland, may arbitrate the fate of
London, or of Britain, as an affair of equal indifference!

I passed a few minutes in the famous Botanic Garden of the
Apothecaries' Company, founded at Chelsea by #Sir Hans Sloane#. It was
the first establishment of the kind in England, but has now for some
years been superseded in fame and variety by the Royal Gardens at Kew.
It still however merits notice, as containing specimens of all the
plants recognized in the _Materia Medica_, and with that view is
maintained, at a heavy expence to the company, for the use of medical
students. The company's Professor of Botany annually gives lectures at
this institution to the apprentices of the members, and accompanies
them in _simpling_ excursions in the country round the metropolis. The
statue of the public spirited founder still adorns the garden; and the
famous cedars of Lebanon add an air of solemn grandeur to the whole,
which could be conferred by no other objects of nature or art. The
conservatories are on a grand scale; and so many interesting exotics
claimed my notice, that I could ha