London Stone. 



man may be ashamed to be found. Every man acts in private what 

 he ridicules in public. The error only consists in the discovery. It 

 is not possible for the antiquary to pass by unnoticed so extraordinary 

 an object as London Stone. It is not possible to find out its precise 

 meaning. The small information received from history, and the 

 smaller from tradition, prove its great antiquity. This curiosity is as 

 little regarded as known. The numerous crowd of passengers take 

 less notice of this stone than of those upon which they tread. My in- 

 quiries were answered with a supercilious smile, and all the intelligence 

 I could gain was, it was a place of rest for the porter's burden. I 

 was utterly at a loss, while I attentively examined this antique, how • 

 to face that world who considered it beneath their notice, and, instead 

 of considering me in the same light, which I wished, might ridicule 

 me for my attention. When a man looks ridiculous in his own eyes 

 it is no wonder he looks so in those of others. This stone appears of 

 a marble texture, near four feet high, two broad and one thick. An 

 ornament at the top is broken off. In the front is an oval aperture or 

 recess, two feet long, at the bottom of which is a broken fragment, 

 which has supported perhaps an urn or image, expressive of the 

 original design. Time seems to have destroyed the lower part of the 

 oval and art has supplied the place with a patch." 



This description is very short and unsatisfactory on that account, 

 still it i3 the only description we can find, and has a greater value for 

 us because it is a fact ; and the prosecution of this subject further com- 

 pels us now to leave facts and examine traditions, which, however in- 

 teresting they may be, are always more or less lacking in the secure 

 element of truth; and the source of our tradition is a History of 

 Britain written in 1147 by Geoffrey of Monmouth, one of the most 

 famous of the Latin chroniclers. This history at the time created a 

 great sensation, and Geoffrey professed that it was a translation of a 

 Breton work given him by his friend Walter Calenius, archdeacon of 

 Oxford. In it Brutus, who was said to be a great grandchild of the 

 famous .Eneas, having fled from Troy because he had killed his father 

 in hunting, came to Greece, and was advised by the oracle of Diana 

 to steer toward Britain with his party of Trojans. After overrunning 

 Gaul he came to the island of Britain, which was then inhabited by 

 giants, and landed in Totness, in the county of Devonshire. Having 

 conquered them together with Gogmagog, who was the greatest of 

 them all, he gave the island his name in the year 1108, B. C. From this 

 narrative, no doubt, arises the further tradition that he was the founder 

 of the city of London, and that he brought London Stone with him 

 from Troy and laid it with his own hands as the altar stone of the 



