FOOTNOTE:

FOOTNOTE:[2]Read on the 4th of May, 1876, to a meeting of district visitors and clergy at the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol's house in London.

[2]Read on the 4th of May, 1876, to a meeting of district visitors and clergy at the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol's house in London.

You have asked me to speak to you to-day about work in this parish, and you know I have not the pleasure of knowing it or you. If anything I say is inapplicable you must forgive my ignorance; but if I am able to give you any hints which are of use it will not be strange, for one comes across the same kind of difficulties in many various districts of London just now. After the paper is read, if there are any special questions affecting your own district which any of you care to ask me about, I shall be delighted to answerthem to the best of my power from this place, or we will have a little general conversation about them later.

Now I am going to say a great deal about hurtful gifts; but do not misunderstand me, and jump to a conclusion that because I speak of these I have lost sight of the great and good gifts we are each of us bound to make. The needs of the poor we must consider our special charge, and each of us give what we can thatisreal help—not only time, and heart, and spirit, and thought, but money too; only we must see that it is really helpful, which needs thought and experience, and if we haven't experience we must seek it. There are gifts of money to be made; there are hard workers recovering from illness to be sent to convalescent homes; there are orphans to be supported and well educated; there are pensions to feeble old people who have worked hard, to be given to meet their own savings or compensate for lost savings; there are childrento be placed in industrial schools; girls to be fitted out for service; travelling expenses to be paid for people going to better fields of work; but the decision about even these safer forms of gift requires experience. Give, by all means, abundantly, liberally, regularly, individually, with all enthusiasm, by all manner of means, but oh, give wisely too.

Now to secure this wise relief, I am convinced you will require good investigation, co-operation on the part of your donors, thought and time given by your wisest men. All these are essential, but I am not going to dwell on them just now; the part of your work I am naturally most interested in is your district visiting. I wonder whether you have among you instances of the solitary, inexperienced district visitor, and can feel for her difficulties? Do you know what I mean? A lady, well born, highly cultivated, well nurtured, becomes convinced that she has duties to the poor. Perhaps some great personal paindrives her to seek refuge from it in Christian service of the poor; perhaps some family loss darkens her whole horizon, and opens her eyes to other forms of sorrow; perhaps some stirring sermon startles her in the midst of triumphant pleasure, making her feel that she ought to give some slight offering of time to the poor; perhaps weariness of all superficial glitter of amusement makes her seek for deeper interests in life. Be it what it may—desire to do good, or the urgent request of a friend, or desire to escape pain, she determines to volunteer as a district visitor. She is welcomed by the clergy, and requested to take such and such a district—I really think she has often little more preparation or instruction than that. She does not start with the desire of knowing the poor, but of helping them; help being in her mind synonymous in such cases with temporal help. She does not think of them primarily aspeople, but aspoorpeople. But though her ideas naturally therefore turnto questions ofreliefas if these were her main concerns, she has never studied what has been found to be the effect of different ways of alms-giving, she knows little about the earnings of the poor, little of their habits and expenses, little about poor-law relief, little about the thousand and one societies for granting various kinds of help, little about the individual donors at work in the neighbourhood, little about distant fields of labour and demands for workers in them. Now just pause and think of the effect of her actions when she begins—as begin she must by the very fact of her view of her duty—to deal practically with questions of relief; questions which, to say the least, are so difficult to deal with wisely that our most earnest, experienced, and thoughtful men pause in awe before them, advance slowly to practical conclusions, and speak humbly about them after years of study. Ladies would pause before they went in and offered to help a house-surgeon at a hospitalby undertaking a few patients for him, yet are they not doing something like it when they don't seek advice in district visiting? Gradually, after weeks, months, perhaps years of worse than wasted labour, those who persevere begin to realise the disastrous effect of their action; hundreds who do not steadily persevere never even catch a glimpse of it, and go on blindly scattering gifts to the destruction of the recipients. For just pause and think what these gifts do to them. You or I go into a wretched room; we see children dirty and without shoes, a forlorn woman tells us a story of extreme poverty, how her husband can find no work. We think it can do no harm to give the children boots to go to school; we give them, and hear no more. Perhaps we go to Scotland the following week, and flatter ourselves if we remember the children that that gift of boots at least was useful. Yet just think what harm that may have done. Perhaps the woman was adrunkard, and pawned the boots at once and drank the money; or perhaps the man was a drunkard neglecting his home, and the needs of it, which should have been the means of recalling him to his duties, he finds partially met by you and me and others; or perhaps the clergy have seen that the poor woman cannot support the children and her husband, who is much too ill to find work, and have felt that if she and they are not to die of starvation they must go into the workhouse, for it is the only means of getting enough for them; charity, not being organised in the district, cannot undertake to do all that is wanted for them, and so had better do nothing. For gifts so given may raise false hopes which you and I, now pleasantly enjoying ourselves, never think of. Because we went in and gave those boots, because others like us gave coal-tickets and soup-tickets last winter, what may not turn up? the poor woman asks herself. That gambling, desperate spirit enters into her heart,the stake being freedom and home. She plays high: she wins, or loses. We charitable people first of all never investigated the case to learn what it really was, what the character of the people was, whether the home was worth keeping together, whether with or without club-money it would cost more than we were ready or able to give; we raised hopes which it is a chance whether we fulfil; we met the want before us without thought; we forgot to consider the influence of that action on the life. Such gifts are uncertain, insufficient, based on no knowledge. Let us imagine that in another case we give to a man whose income is small; what is the effect on his character of these irregular doles? Do they not lead him to trust to them, to spend up to the last penny what he earns, and hope for help when work slackens or altogether fails? Does he try, cost what it may, to provide for sickness, for times when trade is dull and employment scarce? Yet though we have by our gifts encouragedhim in not making the effort to do this, are we quite sure to be at hand when the need comes? Are we not most likely to be away? Trade is slack when London is empty and district visitors away. Every man's riches depend on his providence; they do so tenfold more markedly the nearer poverty he is, yet we have undermined his providence by uncertain action. Do not our doles encourage him to keep his big daughter at home, earning a few pence in the street, where she has what she calls "freedom," instead of training her for decent service? I believe our irregular alms to the occupant of the miserable room, to the shoeless flower-seller, are tending to keep a whole class on the very brink of pauperism who might be taught self-control and foresight if we would let them learn it. I believe too that our blanket charities, soup-kitchens, free dormitories, old endowed charities distributing inadequate doles, have a great tendency to keep down the rate of wages of the verylowest class, partly because they come in like a rate in aid of wages, not so regular as that of the old poor-law, yet still appreciable—partly because they tempt large numbers who might raise themselves to hang on to low callings, and make competition fiercer in them and the chance of absolute want greater. The street-sellers and low class desultory workers usually remain what they are by choice; a little self-control would raise them into the ranks of those who are really wanted, and who have made their way from the brink of pauperism to a securer place, and one where they are under better influences. Above all is this true of the children. A little self-control would enable the daughters of most of these people to rise into the class of domestic servants; and their sons, instead of remaining street-sellers, would soon learn a trade or go to sea if they cared to do regular work. We are largely helping, by our foolish gifts, to keep them herded together in crowded, dirty,badly-built rooms, among scenes of pauperism, crime, and vice. And we each of us think it is only the two shillings and sixpence, only the shilling for this or that perfectly justifiable object we have given. I have sometimes wanted to move some widow and her children to the North, where the children would learn a trade and support themselves well, where the woman would find much more work at washing and charring, and where the family would have a cottage healthy and spacious, instead of the one close room. The widow has been a little fearful of making so important a step. If the guardians, if the clergy, if, above all, the visitors, have let the need of work teach its own natural lesson, that family has removed and has been happy and independent. I have now several such well established in the North. But if the various donors have broken in with their miserable pittances of fixed or desultory relief, the family, in poverty and uncertainty of income, have dragged on here in London. Innearly every case requiring help there is some such step ofself-help which ought to be taken by the family itself, or some member of it; some girl ought to go to service, some boy to get a place, some member of the family to begin learning a trade, some cheaper lodging to be found. Depend on it, you cannot wisely help a family, you cannot tell whether help at all is needed, till the circumstances and character of each member has been well investigated. Lay this to heart as a fact—I am certain of it. Let it be with any of you who desire to do good a strict rule to yourselves to have the case of every family you want to help thoroughly scrutinised. If you can make up your mind not to give anything pending the receipt of a report, so much the better. But if you can't (I think you soon will), at any rate never give a sixpence without sending for a report on the case; it will guide your future action in that and other instances. It is not much I ask of you. The CharityOrganisation Society in every district in London will do the work for you free of charge. I am afraid I cannot yet promise you that it will always advise you as to efficient treatment; some of the committees could, and all that could would. But it is even more difficult to advise as to suitable treatment than to investigate a case, and it is not easy to find members for thirty-eight committees yet who know very much of the subject. But every Charity Organisation Committee will knowfarmore than inexperienced visitors, and I should strongly advise all visitors to consult the Committee about families in their district apparently needing relief.

I hope you will notice that I have dwelt on the need of restraining yourselves from alms-giving on the sole ground that such restraint is the only true mercy to the poor themselves. I have no desire to protect the purses of the rich, no hard feeling to the poor. I am thinking continually and only of what is reallykindest to them—kindest in the long run, certainly, but still kindest. I think small doles unkind to them, though they bring a momentary smile to their faces. First of all, I think they make them really poorer. Then I think they degrade them and make them less independent. Thirdly, I think they destroy the possibility of really good relations between you and them. Surely when you go among them you have better things to do for them than to give them half-crowns. You want to know them, to enter into their lives, their thoughts, to let them enter into some of your brightness, to make their lives a little fuller, a little gladder. You who know so much more than they might help them so much at important crises of their lives; you might gladden their homes by bringing them flowers, or, better still, by teaching them to grow plants; you might meet them face to face as friends; you might teach them; you might collect their savings; you might sing for and with them; you mighttake them into the parks, or out for quiet days in the country in small companies, or to your own or your friends' grounds, or to exhibitions or picture galleries; you might teach and refine and make them cleaner by merely going among them. What they would do for you I will not dwell on, for if the work is begun in the right spirit you will not be thinking of that; but I do believe the poorhavelessons to teach us of patience, vigour, and content, which are of great value to us. We shall learn them instinctively if we are among them as we ought to be as friends. It is this side of your relation to them, that of being their friends, which has given all the value to your work as district visitors; it has been because you have been friends, in as far as you have been friends, that the relation between you has been happy and good. The gift has often darkened this view of you, and prevented the best among the poor from wishing to know you; when it has absolutely been the expression of friendship,its evil has been reduced to a great extent. But the gift you have to make to the poor, depend upon it, is the greatest of all gifts you can make—that of yourselves, following in your great Master's steps, whose life is the foundation of all charity. The form of it may change with the ages, the great law remains, "Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away;" but see that thou give him bread, not a stone—bread, the nourishing thing, that which wise thought teaches you will be to him helpful, not what will ruin him body and soul; else, while obeying the letter of the command, you will be false to its deep everlasting meaning. My friends, I have lived face to face with the poor for now some years, and I have not learned to think gifts of necessaries, such as a man usually provides for his own family, helpful to them. I have abstained from such, and expect those who love the poor and know them individually will do so more and morein the time to come. I have sometimes been asked by rich acquaintances when I have said this whether I do not remember the words, "Never turn your face from any poor man." Oh, my friends, what strange perversion of words this seems to me. I may deserve reproach; I may have forgotten many a poor man, and done as careless a thing as anyone, but I cannot help thinking that to giveoneselfrather than one'smoneyto the poor is not exactly turning one's face from him. If I, caring for him and striving for him, do in my inmost heart believe that my money, spent in providing what he might by effort provide for himself, is harmful to him, surely he and I may be friends all the same. Surely I am bound to give him only what I believe to be best. He may not always understand it at the moment, but he will feel it in God's own good time.

FOOTNOTE:[3]Read at Westminster, June 23rd, 1876.

[3]Read at Westminster, June 23rd, 1876.

You have asked me to speak to you to-night, though I am a stranger to your parish, and know nothing of its special needs or special advantages. Why, then, am I here? I suppose I may safely assume that it is mainly because I represent those who have deep care for the poor, andalsostrong conviction that organisation and mature thought are necessary to any action which shall be really beneficial to them. I fancy your parish, like many another—like most others that have not passed through the stage and answered the problem—is just now questioning itself as to whether investigation, organisation, deliberate and experienced decision, which it feels to be essential if wise relief is to be secured, are, or are not, compatible with gentle and kindly relief; whether charity can be fully of the heart, if it is also of the head. If so, how are you to get the full strength of head and heart. If this is impossible, what in the world you are to do, for you cannot give up either. You ask practically, I fancy, when you invite me here, what I think on these points.

I answer, then, emphatically and decidedly, that my experience confirms me entirely in the belief that charity loses nothing of its lovingness by being entirely wise. Now it cannot be wise without full knowledge of the circumstances of those to be dealt with—hence the necessity of investigation; it cannot come to satisfactory conclusions on those facts unless it employs the help of experienced men—hence the need of a committee for decision; it willnot be gracious and gentle, nor fully enter into individual needs, unless it secures the assistance of a good body of visitors. I do not wish to draw your attention to any special form of organisation, but I believe you will find, the more you think of it, that some form is needed, and that whatever it be, it will have to secure those three as essentials—good investigation, decision by a wise committee, and the help of a staff of visitors.

I shall say nothing further on the first head, Investigation, except that I consider it is done best by a good paid officer. A great deal of the preliminary work is quickly and well done by an experienced person, which it would be difficult for a volunteer to do; neither is it a sort of work which it is worth while for a volunteer to undertake. I refer to verifying statements as to residence, earnings, employment, visiting references, and employers. The finishing touches of investigation, the little personal facts, the desires and hopes, and to a certain extentthe capacities of the applicant, no doubt a volunteer visitor would learn more thoroughly, but that can always be done separately from the preliminary and more formal inquiry.

And now to turn to the consideration of the visitors—those who must be the living links binding your committee with the poor, the interpreters of their decision, the bearers of their alms, the perpetual guardians to prevent renewed falling into want. I have spoken in so many other places of the extreme value of such a body working in concert with a wise committee, and of the mistakes they are likely to make where undirected, that I am unwilling to dwell on either point in much detail here. I will only briefly reiterate that I think no committee can do its work with real individual care unless it contains those who will watch over each family with continuous interest, interpret its decisions intelligently and kindly, and learn all personal detail which may assist the committee in judgingrightly. Unhappily, visitors have very seldom any special training for their work, nor is the need of it pointed out to them. I earnestly wish we could get this recognised; not that any should be deterred from working from want of training, but that in every district some plans for advising and helping the inexperienced visitors, and binding all visitors more together, should be adopted. I have, in a paper read elsewhere, given a sketch of a practical scheme for securing this end. But even without the help there spoken of, visitors might try to look a little farther into the result of their action. They think of the immediate effect, and very little of the future one. Now in all things we must beware of hasty action. It is not well, in the desire to alleviate an immediate want, to produce worse want in the future. I do not know the poor of your district: there may be many more of them, and they may be poorer, than I suppose; but in really populous poor parishesI have found, and surely you should find here, that an immense deal more might be done by the people for themselves than has been done hitherto. Whatever may be the difficulties of finding work for them, aim at that first. Try to get them to bring up their children to callings requiring skill, and which will raise them to the higher ranks of labour; help them to save; encourage them to join clubs; lend them books; teach them to cultivate and care for flowers. These and other like influences will indirectly help them far more even as to outward comforts, than any gifts of necessaries. But do not, when a family wants help, hesitate to give largely, if adequate help will secure permanent good. Remember, if you establish people in life so that they can be self-supporting, it is well worth while to do it, cost what it may.

I know little of your parish. But if it be, as I fancy, one in which the rich are many and the poor few compared to other places,I should like to add a word or two to such residents as are in good health and working here, urging them to consider the needs of more desolate districts, and pause to think whether or not they could transfer some of their time to them. I know it is a difficult question, and one to be judged in each case on its merits. I know well what may be urged on the ground of individual friendships formed with dwellers in your neighbourhood, on the score of want of strength and time, and the claims of your own parish. Weigh these by all means, but think of the other side too, if by chance you can realise it. Friendship with poor old women in your district! Respect its claims; but are there no times when it may be worth while to make a change in work, even if it cause one to see less of friends? Have you ever seen the ward of an East End workhouse, where from year's end to year's end the old women live without any younger life round them, no sons ordaughters whose strength may make their feebleness more bearable, no little grandchildren to be cared for, and make the old which is passing forget itself in the young which is coming into vigour! Is your bright young presence not asked for by the gray, monotonous, slowly-ebbing life of those wards? If your strength does not allow you to visit in remote districts, I grant that an unanswerable argument; for strength is meant to be temperately used and not thrown away. Time! Well, it takes time to go backwards and forwards; but isn't one hour where the need is great and the workers very few worth more than many hours in a more favoured district?

Have you ever realised what those acres and acres of crowded, heated, badly-built houses, over which you pass so quickly by train when you go in and out of London, mean? What kind of homes they make? What sort of human beings live and die there? Have you asked yourselves whether yourpresence, your companionship, is needed there? Whether the little children want your teaching? Whether your gentleness, your refinement, your gaiety, your beauty, are wanted there? Neighbourhood! Oh yes, it has strong claims—some of the best possible; but then we must take care that we let our neighbours come round us naturally, richandpoor. I only know this neighbourhood as I see it from the station, and it is possible it is otherwise inside, for I know quarters where the poor lodge often escape the eye of a casual observer; but I do know districts whicharevery like what yourslooks, where the villas cover all the ground, and there is no place for the poor man's cottage. Where the idea of building for him would be mentioned with awed abhorrence by the comfortable residents, and they would talk about the unpleasantness of the poor living so near, chances of infection, &c. &c. Where the few persons required to serve the needs of the residents live, in asomewhat pampered and very respectful dependence, in small districts decently withdrawn from view, visited and over-visited by ladies who haven't far to go—where the poor say there isn't a house to be had, and the rich say they get everything from a distance.

While you are determined to have therichneighbourhoods, you must have the poor ones elsewhere. When you have gathered the poor round you, built for them, taught them, purified their houses and habits by your near presence, by all means talk about the claims of neighbourhood. But till then you must, I believe, take a wider outlook, and think of the neighbourhoods you have left, where moreover those who indirectly serve you earn their bread. You who are merchants' wives and daughters, nay, even those of you who buy the merchants' goods, have the dock-labourers no claims upon you? If the question, Who is my neighbour? is asked by you, how do you think God answers it from heaven when He looks downand sees the vast multitudes of undisciplined poor by whose labour you live, and the few heroic workers whose lives are being spent for those poor almost forsaken by you?

And if some of you went there to give what little of leisure, what little of strength, you have to spare, would your own neighbourhood suffer? I fancy not. For it seems as if usually where there are few poor and many rich living near together, the former become dependent in fat unenergetic comfort on the latter; and if this be such a neighbourhood, a few finding a call for their sympathy and help elsewhere might do good to all. It might be a real blessing to the place where you live to transfer to other and needier districts some of the superfluous wealth and unneeded care which from its very abundance may be spoiling and pampering your native poor. What a good thing it might be if each of your congregation here would undertake to help with money and with workers some poor district wherewise principles were being strenuously and faithfully worked out. Only remember, though you may send your money, and send it to those who use it wisely, the gift is a very poor one compared with that of yourselves. It isyouwho are wanted there, your love, your knowledge, your sympathy, your resolution—above all, your knowledge; for if you saw, you could not leave things as they are. For instance, on a summer evening sultry as this, there are thousands of families who have no place to sit in but one close room, in which the whole family has eaten, slept, washed, cooked. It is stifling. They go to the doorstep; their neighbours are at their steps. It gets hotter, the children swarm in the narrow court; the dust flies everywhere; the heat, the thirst is insufferable, the noise deafening, the crowd bewildering; they go to the public-house: do you wonder? It may be there are a few spaces unbuilt over close by, but who will open the gates for them,plant a few flowers, put a few seats? The garden of Lincoln's Inn Fields is certainly kept very lovely; but how few eyes are allowed to see it; Red Lion Square is a howling ugliness; the Board School playgrounds are closed on Saturday;[5]the little graveyard in Drury Lane[6]—half the graveyards in London—are close locked and barred, and left in ugliness too; the Quakers are actually deciding to sell for building purposes their ancient burial-ground near Bunhill Fields.[7]Can they not afford to let the place allotted to their dead be consecrated to the poor and become a place of rest to the weary living before their pilgrimage is over? Money, money, money, to spend where we see its effect in parks, or villas, or cosy suburban houses, and not a glimpse of what we might do with it in the districts where the poor live and die.

Of course this is only one side of the truth, and no one knows the converse better than I. I know how people are coming forward year by year to do and to feel more and more of their duty to the poor. The interest deepens and spreads, and that rapidly. Haven't I myself such a body of fellow-workers as makes me hardly know how to be thankful enough? And doubtless many of you here are doing exactly what I urge, or better things than I have thought of. But forgive me if the sight of all that is needed sometimes makes me a little impatient, and urge the point with some implied reproach towards those who delay to come and do what it looks as if they might. I daresay they may many of them have better reasons than I know for holding aloof: all have not the same duties; but sure I am that the need is urgent, and that to many such work would add new and deeper interests to life. I only say, "Look for yourselves what the needis, consider what your duty may be, and when seen do it resolutely, quietly, hopefully."

And now, leaving the subject of visitors, let us consider, in conclusion, the third point essential to wise dealing with the poor—the decisions of your committee after the facts are gathered for it by investigating agent and volunteer visitor. Now, to secure right decision, one must have a distinct object in view. What is to be the ultimate object of your decisions respecting relief? Let us at once distinctly clear the way by assuming that it must be the good of the people themselves. We have nothing to do with saving the money of the rich. It is possible—nay, probable—that in our first attempts to put charity on a right footing, we may have to spend more than we did before, and make larger demands on the purses of the wealthy. A few substantial gifts, wisely bestowed, may easily make up a larger sum than a multitude of petty careless doles. A weekly pension,a grant of a few pounds to help a family to migrate, is more than the money-equivalent of many a random shilling. But if, on reflection, we decide to withhold gifts of any kind whatsoever, it is only to be done for the sake of the people themselves. If doles, or bread-tickets, or coal-tickets, are proved to help the people, we are bound to give them to the extent of our power. If they are proved to injure them, we are bound not to give them, however pleasant it may be, however easy, however it may seem to pave the way for other influences. Do we want to make the poor depend on relief, which is ready at a moment's notice, instead of having the fortitude to save a little to meet a sudden emergency? If so, we shall be always treating cases as urgent, and relieving pending investigation, and assuming that discretionary power of granting instant help must be vested somewhere besides in the relieving-officer. I know parishes where benevolent people pleadthat starvation or great need may arise if they have a weekly committee and no officer empowered to deal with urgent cases. Suppose we ourselves had lost the pride of independence which does still exist in the middle and upper classes, though the tendency to look for extraneous help is, I sometimes fear, eating gradually upwards; but suppose we had no hesitation on the score of pride in asking our richer neighbour for a meal, or new clothes or boots, or additional blankets, or a ton of coal, would it be better for us to use just the amount of providence necessary for us to go to him a week beforehand and say, "Please we shall want our dinner next Sunday," or would it be better for us to be led to expect that if we called on Saturday to tell him the fact, and he was out at a garden-party, when he came home he would say: "Dear me, perhaps they have no dinner, and Sunday too. I dare not wait to see why they are in want; whether there is any member of the familywho might be helped to a place where he can earn more. I'd better send some roast meat. I don't like to be enjoying myself at garden-parties with my wife and daughter and not consider my poorer neighbours"? Do you think that, be our earnings much or little, that kind of help would be likely to be helpful? The smaller the earnings the more need of providence; and there is no man so poor but he might, by effort, at least have a few shillings in hand for emergency, if he really felt it important. Literally, that is all that is wanted to do away with this clamour about urgency. That every man should at some time of his life put aside five or ten shillings which should be ready for need, and apply for help directly he saw need to draw upon that, instead of when he hadn't a crust in the house. I don't know whether you are troubled with this great bugbear of "urgency" here; it frightens many districts, but always disappears when approached. Depend upon it,starvation cases are more likely to arise where we have trained our poor to look for instantaneous help, than where they rely on their own forethought at least to the extent I have mentioned; forifthey trust to sudden aid, and any accident prevents their receiving it, then they have no money, and are in need indeed. Depend on it, the poor-law, which the poor do not turn to readily, which has, moreover, a strong permanent machinery in every parish in England, is the only right source of relief for urgent cases. No respectable family but has friends, neighbours, or savings to fall back on just while you look well into their cases. Those who are not respectable want, and, in my estimation, should have, help; but they cannot be helped easily with grants in urgent haste; they need thought, and influence, and much power. If, then, we decide that urgent cases can be left to the poor-law, your committees will have those only left to deal with whose circumstances they canthoroughly know and deliberately decide upon. And these, I believe they will find, class themselves into cases in which temporary help will raise the applicants into permanently self-supporting positions, and chronic cases. The first, no doubt, they will try to help liberally, carefully, and kindly. The second they will probably help only if they can do so adequately, which I should fancy here you might easily do, if you all heartily and thoughtfully co-operated, and knew each what the other was doing, so that no work was done twice over. Such organisation of alms-giving would be, I should think, the limit of your aim at present.

Perhaps you will also add to these relieved persons a very large number of sick, whom I should be glad to see after, say, a year's notice, forced into some independent form of sick-club.

For I do not myself believe that we from above can help the people so thoroughly andwell in any other way as by helping them to help themselves. This I think they are meant to do—this I believe they can do by association and by forethought. When they do provide necessaries for their own families, I think it leaves our relation to them far better, and enables us to help them more fully in better ways. After all, what are the gifts of these outside things compared to the great gifts of friendship, of teaching, of companionship, of advice, of spiritual help? I know some people think the half-crown, or packet of tea, the best introduction to these. I cannot say I have seen it so. I do not remember a single example in any age or country in which a class in receipt of small occasional doles was in a position of honourable healthy friendship with the givers of such, or fit to receive from them any intelligent teaching. Of course the receipt of alms produces curtsies and respectful welcomes, and perhaps attendances at church or chapel from those who care more for thegifts than for the quiet dignity of independence which is found in many humble people; more for the good tea than for any sermon or service. But how do the better ones feel it? Haven't your gifts absolutely tended to alienate them from churches and chapels? Do they not scorn them, and desire to be seen to benefit nothing by them? The application for help is nearly always made by the wife, and the respectable husband would no more make it than you or I would, in nine cases out of ten. Only notice what happens whenever the rule is that the man must come up to ask for help; they hardly ever come, but simply earn the needed amount. And among the women, too, the better ones hold aloof from anything that looks like bribery to come to a place of worship. I would ask any clergyman whether he does not think that the mixing of temporal gifts with spiritual teaching has not a direct tendency to lower the value of the teaching in the eyes of the recipient? Of old, whenapostles preached, they treated the Gospel as good news which the people would care to receive for itself; they honoured it in treating it as if it were a blessing. Of course it is difficult to distinguish between the actions which come from the radiant outpouring of every species of good gift in mere wealth of joyful human love springing from vivid sense of Divine love, which we see in earnest preachers of all ages, from the gift which is meant to be, and felt to be, a bribe. In many cases, probably, the gifts comprise a mixture of love and a purpose to attract, which it would be impossible to separate. But religious teaching, I have no manner of doubt whatever, has suffered of late years incomparably more than it has gained by this confusion. Let the gift, then, stand or fall by its own intrinsic value; if it be helpful in itself, cultivating such right qualities as will make the recipient richer in such outside things as itself, let it be made. If not, withhold it. And for God's sake letHis truth stand on its own merits. If it be a real need of His children, trust Him in His own good time to make this plain to them. Preach it by word, by deed, by patient abiding; but do not use bribes, or even what look like bribes, to make men take it in. Depend on it, it cannot be taken so. It has been accepted in this and other ages by men ready to meet poverty, toil, scorn, death, rather than be false to it; it has been accepted with acclaim by multitudes who felt in it the answer to their difficulties, the great good news for their lives. The lowest natures, when they have received it, have done so through the noble feelings which are latent in the worst of us. It is only through appeal to these—their fortitude, their reverence—that it can come home to them. I cannot believe that God's truth has ever entered one human heart wrapped up in a bribe. Let it speak quietly for itself; it is very strong. Shall we doubt it? Our special form of it, or applicationof it, may not commend itself to our neighbours. Do not let this disappoint us; let us with single-minded zeal try to get those neighbours to be and to do what they see to be right, and then will be revealed to them, gradually, whatever form of truth they can comprehend and apply. They will help to form God's Church, which is of many members; and if

Our little systems have their day,They have their day and cease to be,

Our little systems have their day,

They have their day and cease to be,

we must remember that the words go on:

They are but broken lights of Thee,And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.

They are but broken lights of Thee,

And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.

FOOTNOTES:[4]Read at a meeting held in a suburban district in July, 1876.[5]Eighteen of these are now to be opened.[6]Now open to the public, and planted as a garden.[7]Since sold for building.

[4]Read at a meeting held in a suburban district in July, 1876.

[5]Eighteen of these are now to be opened.

[6]Now open to the public, and planted as a garden.

[7]Since sold for building.

I have often, on previous occasions, felt bound to urge, not only the evils of indiscriminate alms-giving, but the duty of withholding all such gifts as the rich have been accustomed to give to the poor. At the same time I have realised so fully how tremendous the responsibility of abstaining from such gifts is considered by the donors, that I have not thought they could act on my advice without themselves seeing that it would be merciful as well as wise to withhold such gifts. I have, therefore, usually said: "Look for yourself, but look with the sound of my words ringing in yourears." And those words have been distinctly to proclaim that I myself have no belief whatever in the poor being one atom richer or better for the alms that reach them, that they are very distinctly worse, that I give literally no such alms myself, and should have no fear for the poor whatever if any number of people resolved to abstain from such alms. But, on the other hand, I have long felt, and feel increasingly, that it is most important to dwell on the converse of the truth.

The old forms in which charity expressed itself are past or passing away. With these forms are we to let charity itself pass? Are there no eternal laws binding us to charitable spirit and deed? Are we, who have become convinced that doles of soup, and loans of blankets, and scrubbing-brushes sold at less than cost-price, have failed to enrich any class—have helped to eat out their energy and self-reliance—thereon to tighten our purse-strings, devise new amusements for ourselves,expend more in luxurious houses and expensive dinners, cultivate our own intellects, indulge elegant tastes, and float down the stream of Time in happy satisfaction that the poor cannot be bettered by our gifts—in fact, must learn self-help—we meantime going to flower-shows, or picture galleries, or studying systems of political economy? Are the old words, "Bear ye one another's burdens," to pass away with the day of coal-tickets? Have the words, "Ye are members one of another," ceased to be true because our tract and dole distribution has broken down? Are there no voices still speaking in our hearts the old commandment, "Love one another?" Is that love to be limited henceforward to the pleasant acquaintances who call upon us, and like the same poets, and can talk about Rome and the last clever book? Or is it, as of old, to go forth and gather in the feeble, the out-of-the-way, the poor? Is humanity, is nationality, is citizenship too large for our modern love orcharity to embrace, and shall it in the future be limited to our family, our successful equals, or our superiors? Are we going to look out and up, but never down? The love of our Master Christ, the love of St. Francis, the love of Howard, the love of John Brown, the burning love of all who have desired to serve others, has been a mighty, all-embracing one, and specially tender, specially pitiful. All modern forms of alms-giving may pass and change, but this love must endure while the world lasts. And if it endure, it must find expression. Charity such as thisdoesfind expression. It finds expression, when healthiest and most vigorous, not in weak words, but in strong acts. If we would not be mere butterflies and perish with our empty, fleeting, self-contained lives; if we would not be fiends of intellectual self-satisfaction living a cold and desolate life; if we would not leave the hungry, the forlorn, the feeble, to perish from before us, or to rise and rend us; we must secure suchlove as that which lighted and intensified the lives of heroes and of missionaries, and struggle to see what scope there is for acts which shall embody that love.

The mistake the old-fashioned donors make is not in their benevolence—that cannot be too strong—but they forget to watch whether the influence of their deeds is beneficent. I should not at all wonder if even thirty years ago doles were more beneficent than now. If the poor had at that time not learned to trust to them, if they came straight from the loving hands of those who cared to step aside from beaten tracks to know and serve the poor they must have had very different results from any they have now, when peoplehavelearned to depend on them, when they are almost the fashion, and often the relief for the consciences of those who don't feel quite easy, if they givenotime,noheart,notrouble, noranymoney to the poor. I have no manner of doubt, that just now gifts of necessaries are injurious.What form, then, shall our charity take in the immediate future?

Take that question home to yourselves, each of you who has not answered it already; ask it of yourselves, not as if you were asked to take the position of hero, or martyr, or professed philanthropist, but as if I had said to you, "What do you, as a man or woman, feel bound to do beyond the circle of your family for those who are fellow-men, fellow-citizens, many of them sunk into deep ruts of desolation, poverty, and sin?" Find some answer, live up to it, so shall your own life, your own city, your own age be better.

I will tell you what kind of answer I think may come to you. First, as to money, which is perhaps the most difficult thing to give without doing harm. Don't sit down under the conviction that therefore you are to buy or spend it all for yourself. If you like to earn rather less, to pause in middle life, and give full thought to spending what you have,or, better still, to give time which might have made money, I shall certainly not complain of you. But do not think there is no scope for beneficent gifts of money because soup-kitchens and free dormitories are not beneficent. There is abundant scope for large gifts, large enough to please the proudest of you. Are there no great gifts of open spaces to be made for the rich and poor to share alike in the time to come—spaces which shall be to the child no more corrupting than the mountain to the Highlander, or the long sea horizon to the fisherman's lad? They will come to him as an inheritance he possesses as a Londoner or an English child; most likely being taken, like light and air, straight from God, and not in any way tending to remind him of men's gifts, still less to pauperise him. But if a memory of you as a donor comes to him as youth ripens into manhood, long after you are in your grave, the thought is more likely to incite him to make some great, abidingly usefulgift to his town, than in any way to paralyse his energies or weaken his self-respect. Are there no places to plant with trees, no buildings to erect, no libraries to found, no scholarships to endow? Are there, moreover, none of those many works to achieve, which a nation, a municipality, a vestry, first needs to see done, to learn the use of by using, though finally such a community may prize them more by making an effort to establish similar ones? For instance, no one would dwell more urgently than I on the need of making healthy houses for the poor remunerative; and now the problem of doing so has been in a great measure solved. But do we not owe this to the efforts of a body of men in earlier time who were content to lose money in experiments and example? Pioneers must risk, if not give, largely, that we may travel smoothly over the road which they made with such difficulty. Are we in turn never to be pioneers? Are there no improved public-houses, no improvedtheatres, no better machinery for collecting savings, which we may establish and give our money to? The same kind of far-sighted policy might be adopted with all smaller gifts, making them either radically beneficial in themselves, as when they train an orphan for service-work in life, or give rest to an invalid whose savings are exhausted; or they may be gifts of things which no one is bound to provide for himself, but which give joy—as if you helped to put coloured decoration outside our schools or houses in dingy streets, or invited a company of poor people whom you know to tea in your garden during the fair June weather, or even sent some shells from your home by the sea to small children in one of our few London playgrounds.

But to leave the question of money and come to the greater gift oftime. Here especially I would beg you to consider whether you have each of you done your utmost. A poor district in London is inhabited by anumber of persons, ill-educated, dirty, quarrelsome, drunken, improvident, unrefined, possibly dishonest, possibly vicious. I will assume that we, too, have each of us a good many faults—perhaps we are selfish, perhaps we are indolent. I am sure all the virtue is not among the rich; but certain advantages they surely have which the poor have not—education, power of thinking out the result of certain courses of action, more extended knowledge of facts or means of acquiring it, habits of self-control, habits of cleanliness, habits of temperance, rather more providence usually, much more refinement, nearly always a higher standard, perhaps a high standard, of honesty. Have we not a most distinct place among the poor, if this be so? Is not our very presence a help to them? I have known courts nearly purified from very gross forms of evil merely by the constant presence of those who abhorred them. I know, you probably all know, that dirt disappears gradually in places that cleanly people go inand out of frequently. Mere intercourse between rich and poor, if we can secure it without corrupting gifts, would civilise the poor more than anything. See, then, that you do not put your lives so far from those great companies of the poor which stretch for acres in the south and east of London, that you fail to hear each other speak. See that you do not count your work among them by tangible result, but believe that healthy human intercourse with them will be helpful to you and them. Seek to visit and help in parishes in which this is recognised as an end in itself.

Again, we have got our population into a state of semi-pauperism, from which individuals and societies cannot raise them merely by abstaining from gifts by guardians or withdrawing out-relief. We have accustomed them to trust to external help, and only by most patient individual care shall we raise them. Neither can we persuade donors, unaccustomed to study the future results of their acts, toabstain from distinctly unwise charity unless we are among them, unless we are ready, too, to consider with them about each human soul, which is to them and to us inexpressibly precious, what is at the moment the wise thing to do. Have most gentlemen any idea how much this work needs doing in the poor districts of London? The Charity Organisation Society came forward now some years ago to try to get the donors of London to meet and consider this question in detail in every district in London. It undertook to look carefully into all cases brought to its offices, and to report the results of its inquiries. It didnotundertake to make additional gifts except where they might secure enduring benefit, but it said to the donors, "Associate yourselves, relieve after due thought, after investigation, and in conjunction one with another." That Society has made great way; it has established offices in every district, and has provided an investigating machinery of inexpressible value, ofwhich every Londoner may avail himself. But, I ask, where are the donors? Where are the representatives of the various relieving agencies? The clergy? The district visitors? There are of course a certain number who have co-operated heartily, but, as a rule, I am forced to reply very mournfully, after all these years they are for the most part going on with their ill-considered relief very much the same, not using the machinery, and reproaching the Charity Organisation Society thatitis not relieving largely, and that it is not composed of themselves! Now, till these relieving agencies come in and take their share, and give their gentler tone to the somewhat dry machinery, are these offices to be places where mere routine business is done by an agent who cannot have much individual care for the applicants? Or is there to be anyone to watch over each applicant with real charity, questioning him gently, thinking for him sympathetically, seeking for him such help as willbe really helpful? In some offices in the poor districts we have found honorary secretaries to do this, and splendid work it has been. Wherever such help has been forthcoming the poor have been well served, and the old-fashioned donors have been in some measure won to wiser courses of action. But many more such honorary secretaries are needed, and that imperatively and immediately. Are there no men of leisure, with intellect and heart, who will come forward? I have known no such urgent need as this in the many years I have spent face to face with the poor since I came to London—the need of advice, of sympathy, of thoughtful decision for poor man after poor man, as he comes up to our offices at a crisis in his life.

One more instance of the way help can be given, and I have done; for I will not dwell now on the good that might be done by the purchase and management of the houses of the poor, by teaching, by entertainments forthem, by oratorios, by excursions, by the gift of beautiful things. I will only point out now that as guardians or vestrymen the most influential sphere of work presents itself. If you try to get into Parliament, many men of equal education, high principles, and refinement probably contest the place with you; if you succeed they fail; if you try to make a name among the fashionable or wealthy circles, you may or may not succeed; but if you fail no one misses you much. But if, instead of trying to get high up, you were to try to get down low, what a position of usefulness you would have! You would learn much from vigorous colleagues, much I fancy which would make you ashamed; but what might not they gain, what might not the locality gain, if the administration of its affairs were carried on under the influence of men of education! As guardians, how you might see to the poor, leading them back to independence in most thoughtful ways, watching over them individually that nowrong was done! As vestrymen, how you might be on the side of far-sighted expenditure or the suppression of corruption! When I see people all struggling to get up higher, they seem to me like people in a siege, who should all rush to defend the breach for the glory and renown of it, and trample one another to death, and leave little doors unwatched all round the town; and I can't help wondering sometimes why more of them don't pray Marion Erle's prayer when she leaves the wedding-dress unfinished to go and nurse the fever-stricken patient, "Let others miss me, never miss me, God."

I don't the least mean that the works I have suggested are the only ones, or the best, or even that always thatkindof work may be best. The form that charity takes in this age or in that must be decided by the requirements of the time, and these I describe may be as transient as others. Only never let us excuse ourselves from seeking the best form in theindolent belief that no good form is possible, and things are better left alone; nor, on the other hand, weakly plead that what we do isbenevolent. We must ascertain that it is reallybeneficenttoo.

All that is strictly practical that I have to say to-day could be summed up in a very few words. I have no changes in the law to suggest. I have not thought it well to relate the past history of inclosures, nor even to prepare for you statistics, neither have I touched on recent legislation respecting commons. I have had but one end in view in writing this paper—the laying out and opening small central spaces as public gardens.

I have to interest you in accomplishing the object. "There is little to see, and little to say; it is only to do it," as was once said by a hard worker. I cannot transport youall to see the good sample-work which there is in some few neighbourhoods in London. I can, therefore, only ask you to let me describe in some detail the need of these gardens, then what has been, and what, it seems to me, should be, done, with various kinds of small spaces. This paper contains this description and information, as to the very simple preliminary steps necessary to be taken to render some of these spaces available for public use; but though so much of it is thus necessarily descriptive, it is only on the ground of its bearing on distinct practical results that I trouble you with it.

There are two great wants in the life of the poor of our large towns, which ought to be realised more than they are—the want of space, and the want of beauty. It is true that we have begun to see that a whole family living in one room is very crowded, and we have been for some years well aware that it would be a good thing if we couldmanage so to build that a working man could pay for two or even three rooms; it is true that we have learned that the extreme narrowness of our courts and alleys, and the tiny spaces, often only four or five feet square, called by courtesy "yards," which are to be found at the back of many of the houses filled with families of the poor, appear to us insufficient. We wish we could enlarge them, we wish that Building Acts had prevented landlords thus covering with rent-producing rooms the gardens or larger yards which once existed at the back of high houses; and we are alive to the duty of trying to obviate, as soon as may be, this want of space, to any degree to which it may yet be possible. But there is a way in which some compensation for this evil may be provided, which appears only to have begun lately to dawn upon the perception of men. I mean the provision of small open spaces, planted and made pretty, quite near the homes of thepeople, which might be used by them in common as sitting-rooms in summer. Even in England there are a good many days when at some hours sitting out of doors is refreshing, and when very hot days do come, it seems almost a necessity.

I fancy very few of you know what a narrow court near Drury Lane or Clerkenwell is on a sultry August evening. The stifling heat, the dust lying thick everywhere, the smell of everything in the dirty rooms, the baking, dry glare of the sun on the west window of the low attic, just under the roof, making it seem intolerable—like an oven. The father of the family which lives there, you may be pretty sure, is round the corner at the public-house, trying to quench his thirst with liquor which only increases it; the mother is either lolling out of the window, screaming to the fighting women below, in the court, or sitting, dirty and dishevelled, her elbow on her knee, her chin on her hand, on the dusty,low door-step, side by side with a drunken woman who comments with foul oaths on all who pass. The children, how they swarm! The ground seems alive with them, from the neglected youngest crawling on the hot stones, clawing among the shavings, and potato-peelings, and cabbage-leaves strewn about, to the big boy and girl "larking" in vulgarest play by the corner. The sun does not penetrate with any purifying beams to the lower stories of the houses, but beats on their roofs, heating them like ovens. The close staircase is sultry, the dust-bins reek, the drains smell, all the dirty bedding smells, the people's clothes smell. The wild cries of the thirsty, heated, irritated crowd driven to drink, the quarrelling children's voices echo under the low and narrow archway by which you enter the court. Everyone seems in everyone else's way. You begin to wonder whether a human being, man, woman, or child, is in very deed in any sense precious, either to God who made them, or to theirown family, or to their fellow-citizens. Somehow you wonder whether, when one of them is carried out by the undertaker at last, to use a common old saying, "His room is not worth more than his company," so fearful is the life to which people take under such conditions, so terribly does the need of a little more space strike you, so impossible seems any quiet in which tone might be recovered by these exhausted creatures. And yet every one of those living beings, crowding almost under your feet, having to move from doorway or stair as you enter, has a human form, a human character too; somebody knows and loves him, some mother, father, sister, brother, child, watches for that face among the many, and would feel a great gap left in the world if that one came never any more up the court. Even the reeling drunkard would be missed. Each is surrounded by a love which makes him precious, each has also some germ and gleam of good in him, something you cantouch, or lead, or strengthen, by which in time he might become the man he was meant to be. Each is a child of God, meant by him for some good thing. Put him in a new colony with wood, or heath, or prairie round him, or even lead him into the quiet of your own study, and you will begin to see what is in the man. It is this dreadful crowding of him with hundreds more, this hustling, jostling, restless, struggling, noisy, tearing existence, which makes him seem to himself or you so useless, which makes him be so little what he might be. Can you give him a little pause, a little more room, especially this sultry summer afternoon?

I think you may. There are, all over London, little spots unbuilt over, still strangely preserved among the sea of houses—our graveyards. They are capable of being made into beautiful out-door sitting-rooms. They should be planted with trees, creepers should be trained up their walls, seats should be placedin them, fountains might be fixed there, the brightest flowers set there, possibly in some cases birds in cages might be kept to delight the children. To these the neighbouring poor should be admitted free, under whatever regulations should seem best. The regulations will vary according to the size of the ground and other local circumstances. In some cases where the ground is large it might, no doubt, be thrown absolutely open, as Leicester Square is, a man being always in attendance to keep order, though the people will themselves help to keep order very soon. In the case of very small grounds admission might be given to certain numbers by tickets placed in the hands of guardians, schoolmasters, ministers of all denominations, Bible-women, and district visitors. Though, no doubt, much supervision would be needed at first, after a time an old man, any not too feeble old pensioner, especially if fortified with some kind of uniform, would be amply sufficient, if alwaysthere, to keep order. His wages would be small, and employing him would be a double charity. In these gardens, near to their own homes, and therefore easily accessible to the old and feeble, they might sit quietly under trees; there the tiny children might play on gravel or grass, with a sense of Mother Earth beneath them. There comrades might meet and talk, whose homes are too small and wretched for them to sit there in comfort, and for whom the public-house is too often the only place to meet in, or to read the newspaper. If visitors could gather small groups of children together, and use these out-door sitting-rooms as places to teach them games, read to them, or get leave for them to train the creepers up the wall, much good might be done, and much of the evil of playing in the streets prevented.

It is to the conversion of these churchyards into gardens that I would specially turn your attention to-day; there are a vast number ofthem all over London, as shown in a map prepared by the Commons Preservation Society, 1, Great College Street, Westminster.

I have ventured to draw the attention of some few London vicars to the question, and if you would each of you look in any crowded neighbourhood known to you, what might be done, and bring the question before the incumbents, churchwardens, or leading vestrymen, a great many of these graveyards might rapidly be made available. Of course there may be special local difficulties here and there, but the process is very simple where there is no opposition; and if those parishes where there is none would lead the way, that would soon bring the others to follow so good an example. The first step to be taken is to secure the leave of the incumbent of the parish. Notice must then be placed on the church-doors giving notice that a vestry meeting will be called to consider the scheme. The vestry then obtains a faculty from the Dean of Arches. Thevestry can then be asked for a grant, and they can apply to the Metropolitan Board of Works for a further grant. In the case of St. George's-in-the-East £1,200 was voted by the vestry, and £3,000 by the Metropolitan Board of Works. This was of course a specially expensive scheme, the churchyard itself being large, and the freehold of adjoining ground, which was formerly a burial-ground belonging to dissenters, having to be absolutely bought. The expense in the case of the Drury Lane ground was about £160; the vestry became responsible for the whole, but hope the neighbouring parishes and private persons will help. It appears to me that the vestries should in the first instance be applied to, though doubtless private people would gladly help if necessary.

It may be interesting to you to know, so far as I can tell you, what has already been done in planting and opening churchyards. Mr. Harry Jones has induced his vestry toco-operate with him, and has made a public garden of the churchyard of St. George's-in-the-East. He obtained the hearty co-operation of his parishioners, and the place bears the stamp of being one in which they feel they all have a share. I believe the churchwarden gave the fountain, and the vestry, instead of having to be urged on to spend more, actually ordered 24,000 bulbs this spring, in their enthusiasm to make the place bright and pretty! The high wall covered with spikes, which separated the church from the dissenting burial-ground, has been pulled down, and the whole thrown into one. The ground has been laid out with grass, flower-beds, broad gravel walks, and plenty of seats have been placed there. The day I was last there, there were many people in the garden, one or two evidently convalescents. The ground was in perfect order, a gardener and one man being in attendance; but the people, though evidently of the lower class, were clearly impressed with a feelingthat the garden should be respected. In fact the special feature of this garden seemed to me to be the evident sense of its being common property—something that everyone had had a share in doing, and in which they had a common interest. The tombstones are all removed, but measurements were taken, and an authorised plan made of the ground, showing precisely the place of every grave, also a certified copy of every tombstone has been entered in a large book. These precautions for carefully preserving power of identifying the spot where any body is buried, and securing the record of the inscription, have entirely satisfied the owners of graves and the legal authorities, and it would be well for vicars having disused churchyards to remember the plan as one which has met all difficulties in the way of removing tombstones.

The little churchyard in Bishopsgate which has been planted is probably well known to most of you. It is, I believe, a delight tomany. A friend said to me the other day, "I often pass through it; it is certainly very nice. The only thing I am sorry about is that they have taken away the peacock and put two swans instead." "Are they not as pretty?" I asked. "Oh, I daresay they are," he replied; "it was the swans I was thinking of, they have so small a space, while the peacock was quite happy, because he always had plenty of people to admire his tail!" The Rev. G. M. Humphreys brought the question of opening the little burial-ground in Drury Lane before the notice of the St. Martin's-in-the-Fields vestry. They agreed to carry forward the work, and it was opened last week to the people as a garden. It is a refreshing breathing-space in a terribly crowded neighbourhood. It is bounded by a small piece of ground on the north which is admirably fitted for a block of dwellings for working people. If the Duke of Bedford, to whom I understand it belongs, would build, or arrange for others to buildthere, a block of houses where abundant air would be secured to them, and transfer there the population of some crowded court, he would do a great and good work.

By-the-way, this paper was written before the news reached me of the temporary closing of the garden until such time as the vestry have decided in what way to regulate the admission of the public in future. As much will doubtless be heard of this temporary closing, I may as well explain, that my friend, Miss Cons, was there on Thursday, and saw the extent of mischief done, and went pretty thoroughly into the whole question. There does not appear to have been any destructiveness of mischievous feeling—the people availed themselves in such crowds of the privilege of going in, that the ivy was very much trampled on, and the yuccas which had been planted in the middle of the gravel without any sort of protection had their leaves spoiled; but the shrubs were hardly injured, nor doesthere appear to have been any intentional mischief done. It is hardly wonderful that the ivy should be trampled on, seeing that no low wire fence, such as guards the beds in Leicester Square, nor little hoops, such as protect them in St. George's-in-the-East, had been placed. At the same time I may add that, seeing how very small the ground is in proportion to the dense population near Drury Lane, in the letter in which I brought the subject of planting it before the vicar, I suggested opening it by tickets distributed by workers in the district, rather than throwing it absolutely open to everyone. I thought that might have been done later, if it were found possible. I also pointed out to the man in charge, as I left the ground last week, thatat firstmuch supervision would be needed. If the vestry has the smallest doubt about the possibility of succeeding in keeping it in order, I have not the smallest hesitation in undertaking to do it for them for a year,if they like to trust me with it, and so meet the first difficulties by special individual care, and prove the possibility of conducting the experiment there, as well as it has been done in St. George's-in-the-East. But I have no doubt they will see their way effectually to carry through the good work they have begun, only I have not had time to communicate with them yet.

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