then to see them, though they saw no more
than the outside and never looked within.

Within are to be seen sometimes things too
horrible to tell, if they were not also things
most needful to be told. Mr. Godwin, who
has distinguished himself by energetic efforts
to direct attention to such matters, and who
had lately published some of his
experiences of London Homes, tells that when
visiting one miserable room, he by chance
opened the cupboard, and was startled to find
upon one of its shelves, shut up with the
bread and the tea-pot, the uncoffined body of
a child. The little limbs were decently
disposed, and covered with a cloth, and on a
shelf above—as they put over a peer his
coronet, or over a warrior his arms—there
was the little house-fairy's cracked mug,
with its golden label: Mary Anne. She lay
there till her coffin could be earned. Not
many weeks before, the mother of that household
had perished, and had been kept in the
room for a fortnight, the work room, eating
and sleeping room of the widower, and of a
family of children.

Thousands who are tottering upon the
verge of such distress will be forced into it by
the coming pressure of war times. Now is the
hour, if ever the hour will strike, when every
man with a firm arm must stretch it out, and
when every man who can get hearing must
speak for those weak and silent sufferers
among us whom it would now be more than
ever cruel to forget. We must unite to be
helpful—helpful each in his own sphere. No
hand lent helpfully is weak when it is willing.

I went back through the leafy square.
The house where there had been a wedding
having been discovered by an organ boy, and
wedding guests being still upon the balcony,
they were suddenly placed at the mercy of a
loon more to be feared than any Ancient
Mariner. Of course, as the poet says, they
"could not choose but hear," for when a hand-
organ plays Pop goes the Weasel, though
"Wedding guest may beat his breast, yet he
cannot choose but hear." If ever I swear, it
is at organs. Yet on that May morning I
was more disposed to look pitifully at the
ragged organist, and think of the life he had
led from his birth under the shadow of
far distant mountains, until he brought his
pale face out—and from what sort of home—
into that morning's sunshine on the London
pavements.

When I had turned the corner of the palace
again, and was in St. James's Park, guns
were being fired, and all the paths were
crowded. A grand carriage, with a white
liveried and laced coachman in front, and
two white liveried and laced footmen behind,
all with large bouquets in their bosoms, came
whirling down from Constitution Hill; when
it was near enough I saw a mitre on the
panel. Disposed to be fanciful, methought,
Here is a bishop who has heard of the
wretchedness I have just seen, and who is
trotting round at a good pace to ascertain
what he can do as a father of the Church for
the fatherless, to comfort the bereaved poor
in their affliction, and to find out how he can
best be a friend to them that have no helper.
The guns are firing in celebration of this
epoch in the modern history of England.
Nothing of the sort was the case, of course.
That day was her Majesty's birthday—may
she see fifty more of them!—and his grace
was making haste down to the drawing-
room. Soon afterwards round came another
carriage, with purple liveries and bouquets,
bound in the same direction, another
mitre on the panel. I thought in my innocence
that since London has two resident
church dignitaries, I had seen the grand state
of the Archbishop, and the humbler glory of
the metropolitan Bishop, the rest of the
Bishops being of course at their sees, watching
over the important interests committed
to their charge. That was again a mistake.
More liveries, bouquets, and mitred coaches
trotted round the corner. The wind seemed
to be blowing Bishops' carriages from the
quarter of Constitution Hill. It was not
until somewhat later that the coroneted
coaches and the coaches of ambassadors
began to throng upon the Bird-cage Walk,
but the Bishops were especially distinguished
by the alacrity with which they hurried to
pay their devotions to the court. And who
shall blame them? Loyalty is assuredly a
Christian grace. Of course their graces can
be loyal to the crown of England without
prejudice to their allegiance to that great
Prince whose subjects are bound to seek Him
in the poor, the sorry, and the sick, and to do
service to Him in the persons of the least of
these. It is a great blessing for London, I
thought, that there are so many high-servants
of this Prince now in town. How eagerly
they will all whirl about in these carriages
during the summer months to make
themselves acquainted with such miseries
as those which I have just now seen. How nobly
they will speak when they rise in their places
in Parliament one after the other, as originators
or supporters of wise measures for the
helping of the quiet poor. It is a great
blessing for the wretched who are in London
that there are so many of their friends and
fathers now in town.

Gladly disposed to celebrate the birthday
of her Majesty by helping in a loyal cheer, I
waited in the crowd before the palace gates,
close by the gold-laced trumpeters. From
before, I was pressed backward by a stout
elderly clergyman, whose wife was
encouraging him to admire the beauty of liveries,
while he himself was writhing backward in
continual fear lest his toes should be touched
by the hoof of a life-guardsman's horse; from
behind, I was pressed forward by an energetic
quakeress who must have maintained herself
on that morning for two hours on tiptoe, with
a persistent vigour that would have made