Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/271

The Making of London. By Sir Laurence Gomme. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912. Cr. 8vo, pp. 256. Ill.

When one takes up a book by Sir Laurence Gomme one is never in any doubt as to whether it is going to be interesting or not. Interesting it is quite certain to be, interesting and stimulating, full of apt illustrations drawn from his encyclopædic knowledge and shedding new light, often from quite unexpected angles, on the subject of which he is treating. The book under review is no exception; indeed, it is so full of topics of interest to antiquarians and folklorists that it is hard to give any adequate account of it within the limits of a review. Briefly, we are invited to consider how London developed and how her history explains the position which she occupies, and the privileges which she possesses or has possessed. That palæolithic man occupied the site where she stands we know from that classic implement which was found "opposite to Black Mary's, near Grayes Inn Lane," and from a number of other discoveries. That neolithic man was there we may assume, though we have no certain indications of any form of habitation attributable to him. With the bronze-using Celts who settled at the junction of the Fleet with the Thames, we begin to see the first traces of the future city in the pile-dwellings erected in that locality. London was "not only a defensive stronghold of the Celts, but, as the centre of a religious cult, possessed the full life of the Celtic tribesmen" (p. 49). Then came the Romans, and Celtic London was replaced by Roman London, which "must always be considered from the point of view of its position as a city of the Roman empire, not as a city of Britain" (p. 56). The city was dependent for its institutions and its greatness on Rome, and "its position has to be measured by these facts, and not by its geographical position in Britain." As a Roman city it had its territorium, and over that area London citizenship has always possessed special rights. What is the next chapter in her history? What happened during that most obscure epoch of history which opens with the departure of the Roman Legions? Did she become a "waste Chester" like other Roman cities, or did she preserve some form of life, and, if so, what?