I got to the
printed catalogues, and for an hour was upstairs among the dim sacred
galleries of this still place, and at the sight of certain Greek and
Coptic papyri, charters, seals, had such a dream of this ancient earth,
my good God, as even an angel's pen could not half express on paper.
Afterwards, I went away loaded with a good hundred-weight of
Ordnance-maps, which I had stuffed into a bag found in the cloak-room,
with three topographical books; I then, at an instrument-maker's in
Holborn, got a sextant and theodolite, and at a grocer's near the river
put into a sack-bag provisions to last me a week or two; at Blackfriars
Bridge wharf-station I found a little sharp white steamer of a few tons,
which happily was driven by liquid air, so that I had no troublesome
fire to light: and by noon I was cutting my solitary way up the Thames,
which flowed as before the ancient Britons were born, and saw it, and
built mud-huts there amid the primaeval forest; and afterwards the
Romans came, and saw it, and called it Tamesis, or Thamesis.
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