the eastern end of Hyde Park, where to-day it is lost or merely
represented by Grosvenor Place and Park Lane, to cross the great
western road out of London at Tyburn, the original "Cross Roads," the
ancient place of execution close by the present Marble Arch, and to
pursue its way, as we may see it still, directly and in true Roman
fashion down what we know as Edgware Road. That great north-western
highway lies over the very pavement of the Romans, which lies only a
few feet below the surface of the modern road.

It is then upon this most ancient highway that in the footsteps of the
Britons, the Romans their beneficent conquerors, and the English
pilgrims our forefathers, we shall march on to Canterbury. The road of
course is broken here and there, indeed in many places, and notably
between Dartford and Rochester, but for the most part it remains after
three thousand years the ordinary highway between the capital and the
archi-episcopal city.

The Watling Street takes Shooters' Hill, so called, I suppose, from
the highwaymen that infested the woods thereabouts, in true Roman
fashion, and it is from its summit that we get the first really great
view on our way, for that so famous from Greenwich Park does not
properly belong to our journey. We must, however, turn to another and
a later poet than Chaucer for any description of that tremendous
spectacle. Here indeed, more than in any other prospect the road
affords, the horizon is changed from that Chaucer looked upon.

[Illustration: SHOOTERS' HILL]

For we turn to gaze on London, the Protestant, not the Catholic, city:
A mighty mass of brick and smoke and shipping,