the immediate neighbourhood of the Thames
Tunnel. The building itself is set back from
the street a considerable distance. It is
approached by a flight of steps, and is a large and
melancholy edifice of about the period of Sir
Christopher Wren, with a high tower surrounded
by eight flat pilasters, on the summit of each of
which is a dwarf column with festoons around its
capital, and forming as ugly a top to a tower as
you will find anywhere. There were few people
standing about outside the church, and, to the
writer's surprise, but a very small congregation
when he got within it.

Just as your Eye-witness takes off his hat on
entering a sacred building, so now, as he speaks
briefly of what took place inside the church of
St. George's-in-the-East, he desires to lay aside
any such lightness of expression as might even
seem to savour of irreverence. And, indeed, he
saw (though not at first) much that shocked and
disgusted him, and not more of the ludicrous
than mixes inevitably with all that is gravest
and saddest in the world.

So much has been written in description of
the services as carried on at St. George's, that it
is unnecessary to say more than that there
seemed little difference between the manner of
their celebration there, and that adopted at the
principal High Church places of Worship at the
more western extremity of the metropolis. The
ofliciating clergyman had so arranged his Master
of Arts hood as to show more perhaps of the red
lining than ordinarily appears, and there was a
more frequent turning to the east than would be
found at St. Barnabas or the church in
Wells-street. The attempts at decoration of the
chancel and communion-table were poor and
paltry in the extreme.

Throughout the morning service the conduct
of the very small congregation was perfectly
orderly, and no allusion whatever was made in
the sermon to the subject which was doubtless
in everybody's mind. The Eye-witness left the
building, supposing that the riots at St.
George's-in-the-East were at an end.

Having made up his mind to do what he did
thoroughly, the Eye-witness had resolved to
"stand off and on" at his post all day. He had
plenty of leisure now before the afternoon
lecture to examine the neighbourhood in
which he found himself, and with which he (as
is probably the case with the reader) was little
familiar.

A wonderful neighbourhood—fishy, tarry,
inexpressibly dirty, and so nautical that the very
weathercock upon its principal church partook
of the spirit of the place and represented a
frigate under full sail, with a union jack to show
the quarter of the wind.

A wonderful neighbourhood, to be sure. You
hardly know that you are in London at all as
you walk through the streets. Many of the
shops kept by Jews are open though it is
Sunday, the Jews and Jewesses sitting at the
open doors, fat, cheerful, affectionate, and
jewelled. It is a neighbourhood perfectly
nautical in all its habits. It is decidedly a low
neighbourhood, but redeemed from being of the
lowest by that very nautical element. Let the
reader compare Ratcliff-highway with the New
Cut, Lambeth, and he will understand this. It
is a neighbourhood of canvas trousers, and
sou'-wester hats, of sextants and the boxing of
compasses. It abounds, too, in negroes, gay in
their clothing, and more gay in their
countenances. It abounds in American skippers with
brown and lantern jaws; thin and tough and
tawny. It abounds in mysterious seamen, too,
who wear black satin waistcoats and have worked
fronts to their shirts and ear-rings in their ears.
There are herrings, too, in this region, and life
belts, and block-makers' warehouses, and awful
advertisements published by the Trinity House
concerning wrecks, and buoys, and light-ships
in remote and lonely places far away at sea.
Cranes, too, and bales of goods such as are
brought in in pantomimes, and, being slapped,
turn to other things. The bales of goods are
not swinging from the cranes, because it is
Sunday, but one catches sight of them through
open warehouse doors, and in passing great
stores that smell of turmeric, and many other
drugs and goodly spices.

Such was the neighbourhood through which
the Eye-witness wandered, a not displeased ob-
server of all these new and characteristic
circumstances. It was in this neighbourhood that
he partook of such a modest luncheon as might
fit him for the fatigues of the day, and all the
items of which were flavoured with, the
herrings with which it has been already said
(as with other salt fish) the native kites are
fatted.

When the Eye-witness returned in the afternoon
to the church of St. George's-in-the-East,
there was a mob in the street in front of the
church, a mob upon the steps, and such crowds
in all the approaches to the interior of the
building, and in the aisles and about the doors,
that for a long time he was unable to form any
notion of what was going on. Having at length,
with great difficulty, got inside one of the
entrances of the church, the Eye-witness
found that the afternoon lecturer, put in by
the Low Church party, was in the midst of
his discourse, which was to be succeeded by
that celebration of the Litany which had given
so much offence to the parishioners of St.
George's.

At the conclusion of the lecture—and it is
only fair to the preacher to say that he exhorted
his hearers most earnestly to disperse quietly,
and to leave the affair in the hands of the
bishop—only a portion of the congregation left
the building; by far the greater mass remaining
behind, evidently with a hostile feeling towards
the anticipated service. The conduct of many of
these persons was, throughout, very unseemly.
They talked in their ordinary tones. They
crowded into the pews which commanded a
good view of what was going on in numbers
such as the seats were never intended to
contain. They stood upon the benches, and they
completely blocked up the aisles and the chancel