volume i. pp. lviii. lix.: and many an honest man, since ‘the hook-nosed

fellow of Rome,’ before a bridge carried him over the waters dry-shod, has tried the same route, in preference to going up to the Mill-ford, in the Strand, or York-ford which lay still higher. In good time, however, the Romans, to commemorate their own successful landing there, built a _Trajectus_, or Ferry, to convey passengers to their famous military road which led to Dover. But history is not wholly without the mention of a Bridge over the Thames near London, even still earlier than this period; for, when Dion Cassius is recording the invasion of Britain by the Emperor Claudius I., A. D. 44, he says,--‘The Britons having betaken themselves to the River Thames, where it discharges itself into the Sea, easily passed over it, being perfectly acquainted with its depths and shallows: while the Romans, pursuing them, were thereby brought into great danger. The Gauls, however, again setting sail, and _some of them having passed over by the Bridge, higher up the River_, they set upon the Britons on all sides with great slaughter; until, rashly pursuing those that escaped, many of them perished in the bogs and marshes.’ This passage, which it must be owned, however, is not very satisfactory, is to be found in the best edition of the ‘_Historiæ Romanæ_,’ by Fabricius and Reimar, Hamburgh, 1750-52, folio,