Identifier: eastlondon00besa (find matches)
Title: East London
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Besant, Walter, Sir, 1836-1901
Subjects: Poor
Publisher: New York, The Century Co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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or among the men at arms, butI know that they were fighting at Agincourt and at Hastings,beside Henry and beside Harold. If I consider the man ofold, the average man, I look in the glass. When I sit upona jury I am reminded of that old form of trial in which aprisoners neighbors became his compurgators and solemnlyswore that a man with such an excellent character could notpossibly have done such a thing. When I hear of a wardelection I remember the Ward Mote of my ancestors. I thinkthat I belong more to the past than to the present; I wouldnot, if I could, escape from the past. But, then, there is that other school, whose disciples carenothing about the past. They live in the present; they workfor the present, regardless of either past or future; their facesare turned ever forward; they will not look back. They usethe things of the past because they are ready to hand; theywould improve them if they could; they would abolish themif they got in the way of advance. They are the practical
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THE POOL AND THE RIVERSIDE 59 men, the administrators, the inventors, the engineers. Forsuch men the laws of their country, their Hberties, the civicpeace and order which aUow them to work undisturbed, allare ready made; they found them here—they do not askhow they came. If they come across any old thing andthink that it is in their way, they sweep it off the earthwithout the least remorse; they love a new building, a newfashion, a new invention; they are the men who only see theTower of London by accident as they go up and down theriver, and they think what a noble site for warehouses iswasted by that great stone place. This is a very largeschool; it embraces more than the half of civilized humanity. Let me speak in this place of the Tower to the formerschool—the lesser half. Three hundred years ago Stow wrote of the Tower ofLondon in these words: Now to conclude in summary.The Tower is a citadel to defend or command the city, aroyal palace for assemblies or treaties, a prison of

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