Tall roods, and holy images, to which we owe the names of existing thoroughfares (Rood-lane and Lady-lane [38]), where the ways crossed, attracted the curious and detained the pious.

Spires there were not then, but blunt, cone-headed turrets, pyramidal, denoting the Houses of God, rose often from the low, thatched, and reeded roofs.

But every now and then, a scholar's, if not an ordinary, eye could behold the relics of Roman splendour, traces of that elder city which now lies buried under our thoroughfares, and of which, year by year, are dug up the stately skeletons.
Along the Thames still rose, though much mutilated, the wall of Constantine [39].

Round the humble and barbarous Church of St.Paul's (wherein lay the dust of Sebba, that king of the East Saxons who quitted his throne for the sake of Christ, and of Edward's feeble and luckless father, Ethelred) might be seen, still gigantic in decay, the ruins of the vast temple of Diana [40].

Many a church, and many a convent, pierced their mingled brick and timber work with Roman capital and shaft.
Still by the tower, to which was afterwards given the Saracen name of Barbican, were the wrecks of the Roman station, where cohorts watched night and day, in case of fire within or foe without.