supplied with glass (a luxury in those times) the
windows of Guildhall, and paved the floor,
which had until then been merely strewed with
rushes. He rebuilt the church of St. Michael
Paternoster, in Tower Royal, and annexed to it
a college for a master, chaplain, clerks, and
choristers. He built a chapel adjoining Guildhall.
Henry the Fifth entrusted to him a joint supervision,
with the monk Richard Hawarden, over
the restoration of Westminster Abbey, the nave
of which had remained in ruins for many years;
and, moreover, in 1415, the king issued minutes
of council, directing that the corporation should
not demolish any building or wall in the City
without first obtaining the opinion of Richard
Whittington. There were many of the elements
of a great man in all this.

The far-famed cat has taken part in a good
many matters relating to the illustration of Sir
Richard's career. His executors rebuilt Newgate
according to his bequest, and adorned the
front with a sculpture of Whittington and his
Cat; this remained standing till 1780, though
injured by the great fire of 1666. The Mercers'
Company had once a portrait of Whittington
with his Cat, dated 1536; they have now one of
later date. Elstrack engraved a third in 1590.
Grainger, in his History of England, says that
Elstrack's picture had at first a Death's head
instead of a cat; that the public would not buy
it; that Elstrack erased the Death's head, and
put in a cat; that the print then sold well;
and that the Death's head impressions became
extremely rare. By far the most curious
matter associating Whittington with a cat has
come to light since the publication of Mr.
Lysons's book. On removing the foundation of
a house in Westgate-street, Gloucester, in 1862,
there was found a stone sculptured in bas-relief;
it appeared to have been part either of
a wall-tablet or of a chimney-piece. The sculpture
represented a youth with a cat in his
arms; and its style and appearance were traced
by expert persons to the fifteenth century.
Now, the curious point is this: that the house
in question can be proved to have been in the
possession of a grand-nephew of Sir Richard
Whittington, either when Sir Richard was an
old man, or soon after his death.—Not conclusive
evidence this, of course, that pussy really
did visit the King of Barbary's dinner-table;
but evidence worth recording, for all that.

The invested estates left by Whittington for
the support of "God's House"—the hospital,
college, or almshouse established by him—
became in time very valuable, and led to the
building, in recent days, of Whittington's Alms-
houses, a large structure near Highgate Archway.
In the principal quadrangle is a figure
of our friend Dick, sitting on a stone, and
apparently listening to the famous Bow bells.

As to the stone itself, Dr. Dryasdust, junior,
in Notes and Queries, has recently shown that
there have been no fewer than four "Whittington's
stones" at Highgate, each claiming to
be the original in name, if not in verity. The
site of the real ancient stone is supposed to have
been once occupied by a wayside cross,
belonging to an adjacent lazar-house and chapel
dedicated to St. Anthony. The old stone (whatever
may have been its shape) was removed by a
surveyor of the roads in seventeen hundred and
ninety-five. Broken or sawn in two, the pieces
were placed as kerbstones against the posts on
either side of Queen's Head-lane, in Lower-street,
Islington; and a few years ago there were
Islingtonians who believed that one of the stones still
formed the threshold of the hostelry known as
the Queen's Head. Stone the second, with an
inscription, was placed on the road leading from
Holloway to Highgate, shortly after the removal
of the first. This second stone was replaced
by a third, at the instance of the churchwardens,
in eighteen hundred and twenty-one.
Finally, stone the third gave place to stone the
fourth about ten years ago.

We will continue to believe that Dick Whittington
did sell his cat.

          STONING THE DESOLATE.

THERE are, in certain parts of Ireland and
especially upon the Curragh of Kildare, hundreds
of women, many of them brought up respectably,
a few perhaps luxuriously, now living day after
day, week after week, and month after month, in
a state of solid heavy wretchedness, that no mere
act of imagination can conceive. Exposed to sun
and frost, to rain and snow, to the tempestuous
east winds, and the bitter blast of the north,
whether it be June or January, they live in the
open air, with no covering but the wide vault of
heaven, with so little clothing that even the
blanket sent down out of heaven in a heavy fall
of snow is eagerly welcomed by these miserable
outcasts. The most wretched beings we profess
to know of, the Simaulees and Hottentots of
Africa, have holes whereinto they may creep, to
escape the heat of the sun or the winter's rages,
but the women-squatters of the Curragh have
no shelter, there is no escape for them but to
turn their backs to the blast, and cower from it.
The misery that abounds round our large camps
in England is a load heavy enough for us to
bear, but it is not at all to be compared to what
can be seen daily in Ireland. If one of these
poor wretches were to ask but for a drop of
water to her parched lips, or a crust of bread to
keep her from starving, Christians would refuse
it; were she dying in a ditch, they would not go
near to speak to her of human sympathy, and
of Christian hope in her last moments. Yet
their priests preach peace on earth, good will
among men, while almost in the same breath
they denounce from their altars intolerant
persecution against those who have, in many
cases, been more sinned against than sinning.
This is not a thing of yesterday. It has been
going on for years, probably fifty, perhaps a
hundred.

Twenty years ago, in eighteen 'forty-four, I
remember the priest's coming into the barracks
at Newbridge, with a request that the