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,
Dirty and dusky, but as wide as eye
Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping
In sight, then lost amid the forestry
Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping
On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy;
A huge dun cupola like a foolscap crown
On a fool's head--and there is London town!
Don Juan had got out on Shooters' Hill
Sunset the time, the place the same declivity
Which looks along that vale of good and ill
Where London streets ferment in full activity;
While everything around was calm and still
Except the creak of wheels which on their pivot he
Heard--and that bee-like, babbling, busy hum
Of cities, that boil over with their scum.
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