quality as it were, and found that upon the
sixty-three acres committed to his clerical
charge, there were seventy-seven, streets
and courts, containing upwards of two
thousand six hundred houses, holding more
than seventeen thousand men, women, and
children. For every four buildings that
might, in the conventional sense, be called
"respectable private houses," he found
there was on an average one public-house,
or beer shop, and that more than half of the
total number of houses were essentially the
dwellings of the very poor. These very poor
numbered fifteen thousand out of the total
inhabitants, and the ranks of this army of
poverty were described as being filled with
"sailors and men dependent upon the uncertain
labour of the docks; " the women being
generally " seamstresses, working for the slop-
shops, which abound in the neighbourhood;
—poor creatures belonging to the class now
so well known as 'distressed needlewomen.'"
The average rental of the houses—houses in
London be it remembered—was only eight
pounds ten shillings a year!

Such a locality could not be supposed to
afford much in the shape of pew-rents, but
on pew-rents alone must the preacher depend,
as there was no endowment. So, giving six
hundred free-seats for those unable or
unwilling to contribute, our curate began his
ministrations in the new church. His zeal
and excellence of purpose and conduct, had
secured him friends and sympathisers—and
those qualities now soon began to bring him
a congregation. In his vestry he kept an
alphabetical index of the poor, in which was
noted what help had been given to each
applicant who had received a ticket for free
baptism; who a letter for the dispensary or
the hospital; who had been attended by the
district visitors; who had been helped by the
blanket loan society; whose children ought
to be got into the National or the Sunday
School; and so on. Some of the warmest
and best of the free-seats were supplied with
books, in large type, suitable for aged eyes—
and soon it was found that old folks began
to congregate, in numbers, in front of the
church doors long before they opened, that
they might secure these best seats, where
they could see and hear, and have a large-
typed Prayer-book.

The kindly sympathies which enlisted the
poor did more than that. Amongst the richer
people friends were found. The pews filled;
a subscription in the parish paid for gas-
fittings and other needful appointments; and
though, the first year, the curate's gains,
after he had paid his curate at the mother
church, were nil, yet the next year he found
himself with an income, small, yet something.
And now another event took place. The old
rector died—and the curate thanked his
stars he had taken the empty church, without
fittings and without pay though it was—for
new rectors bring new curates. He had

tried his best; striven with the difficulties of
a high duty; and had again not gone
altogether unrewarded.

The church was a very great step; but
schools were all-important—he must have
schools. Having no funds for school-buildings
lie bethought him of the Blackwall Railway
arches. He set to work to try what could be
done in that and in other directions to meet
the many wants of his parish. He addressed
letters to clergymen with good benefices; and
to wealthy laymen; and then he, with the
aid of a curate and a scripture-reader, begged
his parish through from door to door. They
were more than a fortnight going from house
to house, " when great anxiety (says a report
of this experiment) for the establishment of
the school was expressed by the poor people,
but the amount collected was only eighteen
pounds, fifteen shillings—a large portion of
which was in pence." Larger sums ultimately
came from other quarters to aid the work,
and first one school and then another was
got into operation. Amidst all this toil the
curate—(or we must now call him the
incumbent, for we have followed him into his
own church)—had found a wife amongst his
flock, and had become a father. His children
were enlisted in the work in hand. They
folded circulars and helped to seal them; and
one Christmas Eve there was a great feat
accomplished,—for on that day there went
from the door of the house of clerical industry
two cabs filled with letters which the post
would deliver on the Christmas morning upon
the breakfast tables of the wealthy, telling
how on that day of Christian rejoicing one
parish of the Great London had thousands of
people who knew no church, with thousands
of children who knew no school. And those
Christmas holidays were gladdened by a noble
response from the charity of this English
nation. Hundreds of pounds were subscribed
towards the works our clergyman had now in
hand; and still greater gladness was there in
his household, when an old man walked one day
into his church to see what was being done, and
asking what was wanted, and being told the
organ was in debt, put into the parson's hand,
as they left the building together, a piece of
paper, with a request that no name be
mentioned. It was a cheque for a hundred
pounds, and next Sunday the organ poured
forth a strain more than ever beautiful in
that preacher's ear—for the debt was gone—
wiped out by the benevolence that asks no
blazonry in return.

And higher and higher still rose the gladness
of the parson's home, when one day he
returned from a country dinner, to which
he had been bidden by a rich old physician,
who was spending his last years in a quiet
rural neighbourhood. A day-ticket had
carried the visitor to the old man's house.
They had chatted, and dined, and talked of
many things, but never of money; and as the
time drew on when the last train left for