Lisbon, Venice, Genoa, and far-off Smyrna and the Levant.  This line stretches across the whole breadth of the City.  It indicates the former extent of the City, what was behind it originally was the mass of houses built to accommodate those who could no longer find room on the riverside.  It is now a narrow, dark, and dirty street; its south side is covered with quays and wharves; narrow lanes lead to ancient river stairs; its north side is lined with warehouses, the streets which run out of it are also dark and narrow lanes with offices on either side.  It is no longer one of the great arteries of the City.  Those who come here use it not for a thoroughfare but for a place of business.  When their business is done they go away; the churches, of which there were once so many, are more deserted here than in any other part of the City Let me give you a little—­a very little—­of its history.

Two thousand years ago, or thereabouts, the City of London was first begun.  At that time the Thames valley, where now stands Greater London, was a vast morass, sometimes flooded at high tide, everywhere low and swampy, studded with islands or bits of ground rising a few feet above the level—­such was Thorney Island, on which Westminster Abbey was built; such was the original site of Chelsea and Battersea.

On the south side the swamp and low ground continued until the ground began to rise for the first low Surrey Hills at what is now called Clapham Rise.  On the north side the swamp was bordered by a well-defined cliff from ten to thirty or forty feet high, which followed a curve, approaching the river edge from the east till it reached where is now Tower Hill, where it nearly touched the water, and the spot now called Dowgate—­a continuation of Walbrook Street—­where the river actually washed its base, and where it presented two little hillocks side by side, with the brook—­Walbrook—­running into the river between.  This was a natural site for a town—­two hills, a tidal river in front, a freshwater stream between.  Here was a spot adapted both for fortification and for communication with the outer world.  Here, then, the town began to be built.  How the trade began I cannot tell you, but it did begin, and grew very rapidly, Now, as it grew it became necessary for the people to stretch out and expand; there was no longer any room on the two hillocks; they, therefore, built a strong wall to keep out the river and put up houses, quays, and store-houses above and along this wall—­portions of which have been found quite recently.  The river once kept out—­although the cliff receded again—­the marsh became dry land, but, in fact, the cliff receded a very little way, and the slopes of the streets north of Thames Street show exactly how far it went back.  Many hundreds of years later precisely the same course was adopted for the rescue of Wapping from the marsh in which it stood.  They built a strong river wall, and Wapping grew up on and behind that wall, just exactly as London itself had done long before.