Harold : the Last of the Saxon Kings — Volume 01 eBook

In a niche, near the Aldersgate, stood the headless statue of Fortitude, which monks and pilgrims deemed some unknown saint in the old time, and halted to honour.  And in the midst of Bishopsgate-street, sate on his desecrated throne a mangled Jupiter, his eagle at his feet.  Many a half-converted Dane there lingered, and mistook the Thunderer and the bird for Odin and his hawk.  By Leod-gate (the People’s gate [42]) still too were seen the arches of one of those mighty aqueducts which the Roman learned from the Etrurian.  And close by the Still-yard, occupied by “the Emperor’s cheap men” (the German merchants), stood, almost entire, the Roman temple, extant in the time of Geoffrey of Monmouth.  Without the walls, the old Roman vineyards [43] still put forth their green leaves and crude clusters, in the plains of East Smithfield, in the fields of St. Giles’s, and on the site where now stands Hatton Garden.  Still massere [44] and cheapmen chaffered and bargained, at booth and stall, in Mart-lane, where the Romans had bartered before them.  With every encroachment on new soil, within the walls and without, urn, vase, weapon, human bones, were shovelled out, and lay disregarded amidst heaps of rubbish.

Not on such evidences of the past civilisation looked the practical eye of the Norman Count; not on things, but on men, looked he; and as silently he rode on from street to street, out of those men, stalwart and tall, busy, active, toiling, the Man-Ruler saw the Civilisation that was to come.

So, gravely through the small city, and over the bridge that spanned the little river of the Fleet, rode the train along the Strand; to the left, smooth sands; to the right, fair pastures below green holts, thinly studded with houses; over numerous cuts and inlets running into the river, rode they on.  The hour and the season were those in which youth enjoyed its holiday, and gay groups resorted to the then [45] fashionable haunts of the Fountain of Holywell, “streaming forth among glistening pebbles.”

So they gained at length the village of Charing, which Edward had lately bestowed on his Abbey of Westminster, and which was now filled with workmen, native and foreign, employed on that edifice and the contiguous palace.  Here they loitered awhile at the Mews [46] (where the hawks were kept), passed by the rude palace of stone and rubble, appropriated to the tributary kings of Scotland [47]—­a gift from Edgar to Kenneth—­and finally, reaching the inlet of the river, which, winding round the Isle of Thorney (now Westminster), separated the rising church, abbey, and palace of the Saint-king from the main-land, dismounted—­and were ferried across [48] the narrow stream to the broad space round the royal residence.

CHAPTER V.