n sea to be well protected therefrom, yet
sufficiently near thereto to have early become a powerful city and a great
port.

[Illustration: _The Wards of the City (E. C.)_]

Roman occupation, in spite of historians to the contrary, has with the
later Norman leavened the Teutonic characteristics of the people of
Britain perhaps more than is commonly credited. Caesar's invasion was
something more than a mere excursion, and his influence, at least
afterward, developed the possibilities of the "mere collection of huts"
with the Celtic name into the more magnificent city of Londinium.

It has been doubted if Caesar really did know the London of the Britons,
which historians have so assiduously tried to make a great and glorious
city even before his time. More likely it was nothing of the sort, but was
simply a hamlet, set down in a more or less likely spot, around which
naturally gathered a slowly increasing population.

In a way, like the Celtic hill towns of Normandy and Brittany, it took
Roman impulse to develop it into anything more beautiful and influential
than the mere stockade or _zareba_ of the aborigine. The first mention of
London is supposed to be in the works of Tacitus, a century and a half
after Caesar's invasion. From this it would appear that by the year 62, in
the reign of Nero, _Londinium_ was already a place of "great importance."

Against the Roman domination the Britons finally rose at the call of the
outraged Boadicea, who marched directly upon London as the chief centre of
power and civilization. Though why the latter condition should have been
resented it is still difficult to understand. Ptolemy, who, however, got
much of his information second-hand, refers to London in his geography of
the second century as _Londinion_, and locates it as being situate
somewhere south of the Thames. All this is fully recounted in the books of
reference, and is only mentioned as having more than a little to do with
the modern city of London, which has grown up since the great fire in
1666.

As a British town it occupied a site probably co-extensive only with the
later Billingsgate and the Tower on one hand, and Dowgate on the other.
Lombard and Fenchurch Streets were its northerly limits, with the
Wall-Brook and Sher-Bourne on the west. These limits, somewhat extended,
formed the outlines of the Roman wall of the time of Theodosius (394).

Coming to a considerably later day, a matter of twelve hundred years