Page:Pleasures of England (1888).djvu/54

 them, Arthur fades into intangible vision:—this much, however, remains to this day, of Arthurian blood in us, that the richest fighting element in the British army and navy is British native,—that is to say, Highlander, Irish, Welsh, and Cornish.

Content, therefore, (means being now given you for filling gaps,) with the estimates given you in the preceding lecture of the sources of instruction possessed by the Saxon capital, I pursue to-day our question originally proposed, what London might have been by this time, if the nature of the flowers, trees, and children, born at the Thames-side, had been rightly understood and cultivated.

Many of my hearers can imagine far better than I, the look that London must have had in Alfred's and Canute's days. I have not, indeed, the least idea myself what its buildings were like, but certainly the groups of its shipping must have been superb; small,