far, so good. The "work" of the father, and
the "charing" of the mother, may, by-and-
bye, meet even the tax-gatherer's demand;
but all cannot leave so good a reason for their
absence.

One of the most curious parts of our curious
parish is Burlington Square. Burlington
Square is, architecturally, of the Roman
cement order; which invariably gives houses
the appearance of having worn out their
respectability before they were fairly finished.
What was destined for the garden and
pleasure-ground for children whose parents could
afford the requisite guinea a year, has been
turned into the potato, cabbage, and flower-
ground, of a small market-gardener and florist.
What would have been the "lodge", is now a
small hot-house. Half the iron rails have been
knocked in or stolen, and the vacuities are
patched with pieces of board, old matting, or
unhealthy-looking clumps of privet. The fact
is, the houses in Burlington Square were an
unfortunate speculation. When the "skeletons"
of the greater part were run up, the
projector found that his purse had run down.
When the frost had swollen the mortar, and
rendered some of the bricks dangerously
independent of each other, the rain sapped the
parapets, and a rich green moss slowly
gangrened the rafters. Splodgit, the publican at
the corner, made an offer for the lot, bought
them, stuccoed them, and fitted them up one
by one. He tried at first to get respectable
tenants to avoid cutting up each house into
lodgings; but it was of no use—Burlington
Square gradually dwindled away among
laundresses, policemen, menders of boots and shoes,
owners of mangles, proprietors of donkeys, and
dealers in milk. Consequently, Burlington
Square, in the district of Albans West,
St. Nancy de Lovell, was with good reason
designated—according to the rank or taste
of the speaker—as a "low neighbourhood,"
a "rookery," or a "back slum". Yet, many
baskets of clean clothes found their way
home to more promising dwellings, on Friday
and Saturday nights, on the heads or barrows
of the forlorn Burlingtonians. Hard-knee'd
Burlingtonians scrubbed floors till they were
white, and fit to receive the best
Kidderminster that ever showed the dust; other
Burlingtonians squatted all day like Indian
idols in china-shops, and defied the
consumptive inroads of London mud, by their
handicraft in nails and leather. There was
plenty of industry, and plenty of
profligacy. All the children did not play in
the street or get run over, and all the
children who played in the street were not
dirty. Many of the houses kept their street-
doors closed, and some of the staircases
displayed a fair percentage of banisters. Scarlet
runners, red geraniums, modest fuchsias,
and even Brobdignagian sun-flowers,
occasionally indicated an amelioration in the
items of humanity forming the St. Nancy
Burlingtonia. Poverty had lots of votaries,
but Despair could not have claimed them for
his own. Take it all for all, the Recording
Angel might have found more work in
Burlington Square, than the Accusing
Spirit.

The church of Albans West, St. Nancy de
Lovell, was a new structure, and its new
perpetual curate was the Reverend Bird Fowler;
a middle-aged gentleman in more senses than
one. His whole house and establishment was
middle-aged, from the housekeeper down to
the hall chairs. His shirt collar was a
mediæval hoop, his coat a mediæval cassock,
and his only chimney ornaments a few
mediæval crosses and fonts. He walked with
downcast eyes, frequently crossed his hands
on his breast, and seemed perpetually wrapped
in thought. Mischievous people likened him
to a stiff and faded monumental brass. The
boys were afraid of him, and the little girls
looked up to him with an indefinite kind of
wonder. He scarcely ever spoke above a
whisper, and then in but few words. He
never laughed. If he smiled, he seemed
astonished at his own facility, and quite
ashamed of himself. He was never seen in
company with any human beings but clergymen;
he toasted his own bread for breakfast,
and was supposed to have a leaning towards
the doctrine of celibacy.

The more parochial features of his
character were those which more intimately
concerned Albans West. Placed suddenly in a
district where half the neighbourhood was built
and tenanted upon the Burlingtonian model,
activity was the first requisite in a new clergyman.
Nor was the Reverend Bird Fowler
wanting in activity. He quarrelled with the
schoolmaster of the Albans district about
some hymn-books used by the children on the
first visit he paid to the school-house, and got
up a singing class for Gregorian chants, and
for anthems a thousand times too difficult for
any parochial children the next day. He
made an attempt to clip the too luxuriant
tresses of some of the little girls. Indignant
remonstrances from the mothers followed;
ending in the removal of one clever little girl,
whose rapid improvement was thus cut short
with her ringlets. Finally—backed by the
influence of some ancient virgins of the
district—he invented and introduced a new
costume for the girls, which combined the
demureness of a nun's habit with the
symmetry of a strait jacket.

Inside the church, Mr. Bird Fowler was
uncommonly active; the bells were hard at
work, at all sorts of times and seasons. The
church was open all day for people to drop
in, either to pray, or to stare about them
and look at the diapered organ-pipes, or to
try and steal the books off the lectern and
out of the pews; as Mawley Toms did, who
was subsequently for that sacrilege transported
for the term of his natural life. Furthermore,
directly service began, the priests at the altar
and the scanty congregation in the open