been strengthened annually by the Christmas
bounty of the most powerful of our newspapers,
which at that season opens its columns
to every fair statement to the rich. Of help
given at Christmas from outside the parish
to keep off hunger and cold, not a penny has
gone to the eight or nine thousand pounds that
built the church; or to the six thousand or
more that built the new National Schools; or
fit building for the School of Art; or to the
two thousand three hundred and odd that built
the orphanage; or to the eleven hundred and
odd pounds that built the soup kitchen and
rooms for the needlewomen's army work. Here
are some twenty thousand pounds in all, being
a portion only of the money that has been
obtained and used for the creation, maintenance,
and support, of good works in this poor and
once neglected district.

The incumbent himself, whom, as manager
of Vauxhall, we applied to for admissions to his
ground, and who, though our visit was unsought,
willingly answered questions, met our wonder
by freely showing to us all his books, in which
the debtor and creditor accounts of each
undertaking are specified to the uttermost, and in as
orderly a way as one might expect to find
matters of cash recorded in a city counting-
house. But, the seeing of the accounts only
increased in us the wonder that so much should
have been done. There is no difficulty, says the
incumbent of St. Mary-the-Less. Very many
people in this country have surplus money, with
a part of which they are glad to know how they
can do some real good. Any work for the well-
being of the poor is freely helped when it is
seen that there is a real effort to do it, and
that the money given in its aid is really spent
upon it. The great thing is to keep faithful
accounts, open to everybody interested in the
matter. So says the Reverend Robert Gregory,
to whose faithful service of his Master, yet
more, we suspect, than to his faithful book-
keeping, this district of Lambeth owes a larger
debt than we can tell.

We went into the old church, where all the
seats are free, while it was yet bright with its
Christmas decorations. Sound in even decorative
repair, the old shaking windows have ceased
their rattling, and even a large painted window
rejoices the eye with warm colours. A choir
vestry had just been built, because a curate with
a strong bent for church music has been wisely
backed in his efforts to add the attraction of
good music to the sacred services. For, the
church still has ample galleries which, for want
of a sufficient congregation, are not used.

The time is not very distant when the galleries
of the old church will be opened, and both
churches will be full; for a new generation is
being formed of parishioners who will owe them
cordial affection. We saw the self-supporting
schools attached to the old church crowded
with children who pay, some of them sixpence
a week, for their instruction. We saw a happy
woman in a little room that had once been a
Mormon meeting-house, a room no bigger than
an ordinary dining-room, crammed with more
than a hundred small children, lively and thick
as maggots in a cheese. That woman, with a
hard-worked pleasant face, lives daily in the
mob of little children as their only teacher.
She has no assistants, and no system but love.
She likes her work and loves her children.
There is no order or discipline among them in
scholastic sense, but she contrives to teach
them all to read, write, and do sums: to say the
catechism, and be kind to one another. We must
see this little fellow's writing on a bit of slate.
We must hear that chubby little mortal read
about Elias, which he does well, except for his
tumbling and disappearing down the gaping
mouth of one overwide word. Surely it was
a pretty sight to see this gentle woman in her
child world! The crowd of small folk in narrow
space made one think of the good woman who
lived in a shoe, and had so many children that
she didn't know what to do. Only this woman
did know what to do, and she was doing it, in
wise simplicity, with all her heart and soul.

Thence, we went to the spacious rooms of the
new National Schools, which form part of the
new illuminations on the old ground of the
gardens at Vauxhall. There, we saw bright-
looking teachers, each before her class; and a
room full of infant learners, one or two of whom
had actually learnt to speak from the kind
voice of a teacher, who seemed to enjoy the
charge over her small army of unmartyred
innocents. We went to the orphanage, where
fatherless daughters of professional men are
trained to the work of national schoolmistresses.
A pleasant airy home, with a cheerful common
room that has a buttery-hatch in one of its
walls for the immediate passage in and out of
cups, plates, dishes, and victuals from the
kitchen. With apartments for mistresses, who,
having passed their chrysalis state, act here as
superintendents, and know how by dexterous
artistic handiwork, to make their little she-
parlour elegant with evidences of good taste.
With dormitories partitioned into little sleeping
closets, each open above to the common air of
the room, each with its little latticed-window,
and its little bed and other needments, each
with its narrow walls adorned according to the
fancy of its occupant.

We went into the busy kitchen, where we
found plum-pudding, roley-poley shape, boiled
in long tins, and meat and vegetables ready; and
besides the buttery-hatch that opened on the
orphanage dining-room, a lift to carry some of
the good victual up to realms above.

We sought those realms above and found
there the club-room furnished to the working
men. An eating-room with a counter supplied by
the lift, and a table of charges, that enabled men
and boys to have a plate of soup or meat, with
or without bread or vegetables, or a slice of
pudding, or all in succession, at the lowest
possible charge. There is an old gentleman in
fustian, dining as comfortably at his club as a
gentleman in broadcloth at his club can wish
to dine. Here, seated in slow deliberate enjoyment
of his penny slice, is the boy we saw