and munificence which characterize the London citizen and the London merchant now, have been their distinguishing features in all ages. Increased wealth has only given enlarged means of doing good, and although the citizen is not now menaced with the violation of his charter, or called upon for forced exactions, yet he is not the less watchful over his privileges.

While the authors have been thus attentive to the history of London, they have not neglected those local objects which are worthy of public attention; they have not merely confined themselves to a history of the civil, military, and ecclesiastical government of the metropolis, or to tracing the advancement of literature, science, and the arts, from their origin to their present state of refinement; they have not been unobserving of the manners and amusements of London at different ages, or of its public buildings; their object being to render their work at once a history and a guide, which, while it gives a faithful representation of the metropolis in the "olden time," catches "the living manners as they rise."

The work at least possesses novelty in design; how far it may claim merit in the execution, the public will decide. The authors may, however, claim for another, that which they would hesitate to do for themselves-the spirit and beauty of the engravings which embellish the work. These are from original designs, and, as will be seen, present some of the most novel and interesting views in the

metropolis. The map embraces a considerable portion of the environs, and yet is at once clear and distinct. Some claim the authors might perhaps set up, were it only that of having condensed into three portable volumes the spirit of all preceding histories of London, and of having reduced, to a systematic form, what has hitherto been chaotic and desultory.

A long engagement in a former work, to which allusion has already been made, has, it will be seen, caused a natural partiality to anecdotes, but if in the following pages these should be found scattered more liberally than is usual in works of this sort, the authors trust to their appositeness for indulgence.

FOUNDATION OF THE CITY.

AT what precise period the metropolis of the British empire was founded, remains to this day hid in obscurity. Several of our early chroniclers have, it is true, settled the point for posterity in a very circumstantial manner, but without the smallest regard to evidence of any sort. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, and all the retailers of his fables, London was founded in the year 1108 before the Christian era, by Brute, a lineal descendant of Eneas, and called by him, after the great scene of his ancestor's exploits, Troy Novant, or New Troy, whence the inhabitants received the name of Trinovantes, or Trinobantes; and so, as we are further told, it continued to be called for a thousand

years and more, till the sceptre having devolved on King Lud, a native of Britain, he gave it the name of Caer Lud, or Ludstoun, which in process of time became softened into London. Mr. Pennant, rejecting this romantic story, has framed another of his own, on the basis of a derivation in Baxter's Glossary, which seems nearly as fanciful. "London," he says, "certainly existed prior to the invasion of Cæsar; it was, at the time of his arrival in this island, the capital of the Trinobantes, who had recently come from Belgium, and composed one of the small nations into which Britain was formerly divided. The name of this nation, as we learn from Baxter's British Glossary, was derived from the three following British words-tri now hant, which signify the inhabitants of the New City, the ancient name of the renowned metropolis of Britain."-If it were in the usual order of things, for people to build cities first, and then to be called after them, this definition would be plausible at least; but since we know of nothing of the kind in the history of nations, we are forced to conclude that New City and New Troy belong equally to the domain of fiction.

"The Romans," continues Mr. Pennant, "soon fixed their eyes on this new town, and great numbers of them settling in it, they gave it the name of Londinium from its situation, and Augusta from its grandeur; and in a little time it became the largest and most opulent city in the island." Tacitus, who is the first Roman author who speaks of London by that name, does say, that "London is so called from its situation, and Augusta from its grandeur." (Lib. xiv. c. 33.) But he does not say from whom it received these different appellations; nor does there seem the

least reason to infer, with Mr. Pennant, that they were both conferred by the Romans. The name given to it on account of "its situation," was doubtless derived from those who chose that situation; and there is no better proof that the city had an existence prior to the invasion of the Romans, than that it is in the language of the native Britons we find the explanation of the name. 66 Lyn-Din," in the ancient British, signifies the town on the luke; and this we may readily suppose to have been a correct enough description of the situation of London at the time of its foundation, when the waters of the river, not confined as they now are by buildings and embankments, spread over a large portion of that vast flat which lies between Wandsworth and Deptford. From Lyndin to London the deviation is slight; and in Londinium, the original British name merely acquired a Latin formation. Augusta, the name which it subsequently received on account of its magnificence, was evidently altogether Roman.

Ammianus Marcellinus, who flourished later than Tacitus, speaks of Londinium as the city of the Trinobantes; and this is the most decisive evidence that we have, that it is to this people the honour of founding the British capital belongs.

STATE OF THE CITY BEFORE THE ROMAN INVASION.

When we read of London being " the Capital of the Trinobantes," the mind naturally completes the ideal picture, by supposing it to have been, at the arrival of the Romans, the seat of a regular govern