shoes. He was of a staid, wealthy, and
dissatisfied aspect. In his hand, he conducted to
church a mysterious child: a child of the feminine
gender. The child had a beaver hat, with
a stiff drab plume that surely never belonged to
any bird of the air. The child was further
attired in a nankeen frock and spencer, brown
boxing-gloves, and a veil. It had a
blemish, in the nature of currant jelly, on its
chin; and was a thirsty child. Insomuch that
the personage carried in his pocket a green
bottle, from which, when the first psalm was
given out, the child was openly refreshed. At
all other times throughout the service it was
motionless, and stood on the seat of the large
pew, closely fitted into the corner, like a rain-
water pipe.

The personage never opened his book, and
never looked at the clergyman. He never sat
down either, but stood with his arms leaning on
the top of the pew, and his forehead sometimes
shaded with his right hand, always looking at the
church door. It was a long church for a church
of its size, and he was at the upper end, but he
always looked at the door. That he was an old
bookkeeper, or an old trader who had kept his
own books, and that he might be seen at the
Bank of England about Dividend times, no
doubt. That he had lived in the City all his
life and was disdainful of other localities, no
doubt. Why he looked at the door, I never
absolutely proved, but it is my belief that he
lived in expectation of the time when the
citizens would come back to live in the City,
and its ancient glories would be renewed. He
appeared to expect that this would occur on a
Sunday, and that the wanderers would first
appear in the deserted churches, penitent and
humbled. Hence, he looked at the door which
they never darkened. Whose child the child
was, whether the child of a disinherited daughter,
or some parish orphan whom the personage had
adopted, there was nothing to lead up to. It
never played, or skipped, or smiled. Once, the
idea occurred to me that it was an automaton,
and that the personage had made it; but following
the strange couple out one Sunday, I heard
the personage say to it, "Thirteen thousand
pounds;" to which it added, in a weak human
voice, "Seventeen and fourpence." Four Sundays
I followed them out, and this is all I ever heard
or saw them say. One Sunday, I followed them
home. They lived behind a pump, and the
personage opened their abode with an exceeding
large key. The one solitary inscription on their
house related to a fire-plug. The house was
partly undermined by a deserted and closed
gateway; its windows were blind with dirt; and
it stood with its face disconsolately turned to a
wall. Five great churches and two small ones
rang their Sunday bells between this house and
the church the couple frequented, so they must
have had some special reason for going a
quarter of a mile to it. The last time I saw
them, was on this wise. I had been to explore
another church at a distance, and happened to
pass the church they frequented, at about two
of the afternoon when that edifice was closed.
But, a little side-door, which I had never
observed before, stood open, and disclosed certain
cellarous steps. Methought, "They are airing
the vaults to-day," when the personage and
the child silently arrived at the steps, and
silently descended. Of course, I came to the
conclusion that the personage had at last
despaired of the looked-for return of the
penitent citizens, and that he and the child went
down to get themselves buried.

In the course of my pilgrimages I came upon
one obscure church which had broken out in the
melodramatic style, and was got up with various
tawdry decorations, much after the manner of
the extinct London maypoles. These attractions
had induced several young priests or deacons
in black bibs for waistcoats, and several young
ladies interested in that holy order (the proportion
being, as I estimated, seventeen young ladies to a
deacon), to come into the City as a new and odd
excitement. It was wonderful to see how these
young people played out their little play in the
heart of the City, all among themselves, without
the deserted City's knowing anything about it. It
was as if you should take an empty counting-
house on a Sunday, and act one of the old
Mysteries there. They had impressed a small school
(from what neighbourhood I don't know) to
assist in the performances, and it was pleasant
to notice frantic garlands of inscription on the
walls, especially addressing those poor innocents
in characters impossible for them to decipher.
There was a remarkably agreeable smell of
pomatum in this congregation.

But, in other cases, rot and mildew and dead
citizens formed the uppermost scent, while,
infused into it in a dreamy way not at all
displeasing, was the staple character of the
neighbourhood. In the churches about Mark-lane,
for example, there was a dry whiff of wheat; and
I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley
out of an aged hassock in one of them. From
Rood-lane to Tower-street, and thereabouts,
there was often a subtle flavour of wine:
sometimes, of tea. One church near Mincing-lane
smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the
Monument, the service had a flavour of damaged
oranges, which, a little further down towards
the river, tempered into herrings, and gradually
toned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one
church, the exact counterpart of the church in
the Rake's Progress where the hero is being
married to the horrible old lady, there was no
speciality of atmosphere, until the organ shook a
perfume of hides all over us from some adjacent
warehouse.

Be the scent what it would, however, there
was no speciality in the people. There were
never enough of them to represent any calling
or neighbourhood. They had all gone elsewhere
over-night, and the few stragglers in the many
churches languished there inexpressively.

Among the uncommercial travels in which I
have engaged, this year of Sunday travel occupies
its own place, apart from all the rest. Whether
I think of the church where the sails of the