perhaps as a consequence of the shock which a further explanation gave him, or perhaps because he had completed the natural term of a London beadle, which, from my observation, appears to be about three years.

It was at Fulham that I first tasted blood in the matter of education. The Bishop specially commended to me the National Schools, and I was prepared to go at them with a will. The boys' department, however, had not quite emerged from a state of rebellion, for one of the boys had thrown an ink-bottle at the other curate's head, and the school had been prematurely disbanded for the holidays. When I made my first appearance I heard a hiss, and I thought that the next thing might be an ink-bottle. I told the boy who had hissed to stand out, which, after much reluctance, he did. I then ordered the master to flog him on the spot; but, taking me aside, he said that he dare not, as the lad's father was the gardener at the Vicarage. I went at once to Mr. Baker, who seemed disposed to shield the boy, but I declared that unless I was supported I would quit the parish at once. The Vicar yielded, the lad was punished that afternoon, and discipline was restored.

I worked hard at the schools from then till I left Fulham, and, by taking an interest in the children, got on very good terms with many of the parents. But my stay at Fulham was not destined to be long. Mr. Baker, as I have said, had not suggested my appointment, and was far from friendly to the circumstances.

under which it came about. Moreover, incredible as it may seem, he always had a strong suspicion that I was a Puseyite in disguise; and when I went up to Oxford to vote against the censure and degradation of Mr. Ward-to which, without any deep knowledge of the merits of the case, from innate liberalism, I was strongly opposed the matter was put beyond all doubt.

I do not know what may have passed between the Bishop and the Vicar, but in the summer of 1845 his lordship sent for me to the Palace, and said that he proposed to appoint me to the incumbency of St. Thomas Charterhouse, explaining that, though the parish contained 10,000 people, my income would be £150 a year. I failed to see where the promotion came in, and rather demurred to the liberal offer. I had, I can truly say, no desire to shirk any form of duty which might summon me, but my experience was small, and I was only twenty-six. At last the Bishop clinched the argument. "The fact is Mr.

Baker does not want you here; you must go, and no doubt in two or three years something better will turn up." So I went; and as far as Bishop Blomfield, or indeed anybody else, was concerned, nothing better "turned up" for nearly eighteen

years.

III.

ST. THOMAS CHARTERHOUSE.

1845-1863.

AT Michaelmas 1845 I entered upon the duties of my "living.' It was a Peel district. There can never have been many parishes like that of St. Thomas Charterhouse. The first thing that struck one was that the Church was outside the district. The site of the Church was a spot originally known as "The Wilderness," an out-of-the-way corner of the Charterhouse playing-field principally devoted to the pugilistic encounters of the boys. Here Bishop Blomfield, who had a mania for erecting churches in all sorts of inconvenient places, planted the Church of St. Thomas. He could not, in this particular instance, have chosen a much less favourable situation, but, as a Governor of the Charterhouse, he got the land for nothing and other considerations had to give way. So in Glasshouse Yard, one of the liberties of the City, at the junction of Aldersgate Street and Goswell Street, the Church was built. The district-"parish" in those days was a name

reserved for the mother church-was taken for the most part out of the parish of St. Luke, Old Street, and consisted of an area of seventeen acres, the length of the boundary line being very nearly one mile.

It was bounded on the east by the west side of Whitecross Street; on the north by Old Street; on the west by Goswell Street; and on the south by certain courts in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and by a very small portion of Beech Street. A wonderful ingenuity had been exercised in providing it with the most unpromising conditions. The boundary line had been so scrupulously zig-zagged that every house of a better description had been cut out of the district. What was left was a network of the very lowest courts and alleys, the open ones of which led one out of another till they debouched into Whitecross Street and Goswell Street, and forty-four of which were "blind." The population was about 9500 persons, living in 1178 houses. Many of the houses were mere kennels, judged even by the standard of forty years ago, and in any other district would have been condemned by the surveyor.

But St. Thomas Charterhouse was proof against surveyors. Now and then, at cholera time-cholera time, once a chronic land-mark, seems out of date in these days—a stir used to be made, and one or two hovels would be pulled down and offered up as a sacrifice to the tardily excited wrath of the Paving Board; a lucky court would get a dab of external

D

cences.

whitewash; and then all would be over till cholera time came again. Some of the houses, however, bore traces of having known better days and superior inhabitants. Even Golden Lane had its classic reminisThere was the Palace, remarkable to say, not a gin-shop, which local tradition regarded as Queen Elizabeth's nursery; Bear and Ragged Staff Yard may have been the town residence of the Earls of Leicester; and Playhouse Yard marked the site. of the Fortune, Edward Alleyn's theatre.

In the days of the new police it took some years before uniform protection existed for all citizens. The Liberty of Glasshouse Yard, containing 1700 people, boasted of an immunity from police jurisdiction, and consequently acquired the character of a modern Alsatia. The Act of Parliament prescribed that the police rate should be collected by the overseers, and as in our land of liberty there was only one overseer, the rate was not collected, and the police were not employed. Those of the inhabitants who had any property were naturally anxious that it should not be at the mercy of every blackguard whose greedy eyes were fixed on it, but we were out-voted in the vestry by those whose belongings were of such a trashy description that they were not worth the trouble of stealing. The Church and I suffered in turn. One night the communion plate. was carted off, and six weeks later my house was broken into. The thieves entered at the front; they