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That noble and regal city, the City of London, the second city of the West, the city which was founded by Brutus himself, the city which is directly descended from ancient Ilion and bears its glories—London, I say, could not be built save upon clay. For though at first, in their folly, the builders of London put up their wretched wattled huts on gravel, yet when the spirit took them that they would grow, and they determined to make a town of it, on to the clay they went.

Then again, the clay bred the wheat that used to grow in England, and it grew the barley also, and man, who was made of clay, lived on the clay, drank out of the burnt clay, and ate the fruit of the clay; nor is this all that clay has done for us (and what have we done for clay!), for when I speak of drinking out of the burnt clay it recalls to me another function of this admirable ungotten mineral—at least it is for the greater part ungotten. But for clay where should we be for pipkins, pannikins, porcelain of all kinds, and but for clay what should we do for the olla, for the cream jug, and for those large flat basins in which people pour milk that the cream may rise on top of it? At least the wise people, who go by the old fashions and will not use a separator—for if you know anything of the matter you will know that no pig will thrive upon skim milk unless the cream has risen from it in the old manner: and there I make an end of this digression.