The  buildings,  till  long  after  the  Norman  Conquest,  were
small  and  mean  :  the  better  houses  were  timber  frames,  with
shutters  or  lattices,  but  no  glass  for  the  windows  ;  the  poorer
houses  were  of  wattle  and  daub.  The  churches  were  numerous
and  small.  Some  of  them  were  still  of  wood,  though  a  few  were
built  of  stone,  with  the  simple  circular  arch.  The  first  church
of  St.  Paul's  was  destroyed  by  fire,  a  fate  which  awaited  the
second  and  the  third.  By  the  time  of  Edward  the  Confessor
the  second  church  was  completed  ;  but  of  this  church  we  have
no  record  whatever.  The  Saxon  period,  as  concerns  London,  is
the  darkest  of  any.  You  may  see  at  the  Guildhall  nearly  every-
thing that  remains  of  Roman  London.  But  there  is  nothing,
absolutely  not  one  single  stone,  to  illustrate  Saxon  London.
The  city  which  grew  up  over  the  deserted  Augusta,  and
flourished  for  four  hundred  years,  has  entirely  disappeared.
Nothing  is  left  of  it  at  all.  The  chief  destroyer  of  Saxon
London  was  the  great  fire  of  1135,  which  swept  London  from
end  to  end  as  effectually  as  that  of  1666.  Had  it  not  been  for
these  two  fires,  we  should  very  likely  have  still  standing  one  or
two  of  the  sturdy  little  Saxon  churches  of  which  the  country  yet
aftords  one  surviving  example.  Yet  London  is  not  alone  in
having  no  monuments  of  this  period.  If  we  take  any  other
town,  what  remains  in  it  of  the  years  600-1000  A.D.  }  What  is
left  in  Rome  to  mark  the  reigns  of  the  eighty  Popes  who  fill
that  period  ?  What  in  Paris  to  illustrate  the  rule  of  the  Carlo-
vingians  ?  Fire  and  the  piety  of  successive  generations  have
destroyed  all  the  buildings.
