who had been in prison thirty or forty times;
and he has known men return to their
favourite haunts after being twice and even
thrice transported. In the seven hundred
densely peopled rooms that formed the
district, there were five hundred without a page
of Bible in them; nor were there, when he
first visited the place, any schools or means
of any kind employed to mend the manners
of the people. A clause in the leases of
houses held under the Dean and Chapter
expressly stipulated that they should not be
used as places of worship, unless in connection
with the Church of England: whole streets
of them, however, and the houses in one
entire square, were used as stews of vice.
One, also, was a cock-pit, in which a brown
bear was kept for worrying on Sundays, and
where the dog Billy killed his tale of rats to
delight an attentive congregation. There
was a penny theatre, and there were public-
houses, in which people of both sexes danced
together with their rags off. There, upon
Sunday evenings, was a Dean and Chapter's
house found, that would serve as the training
establishment for pickpockets, and give room
for the notorious Doll, with a sort of judge and
jury club to follow, by which young thieves
were taught the best means of behaving and
defending themselves in courts of justice.
There, were to be found whole houses full of
various attires: one room containing decent
widows'- weeds: one, uniforms of our military
and naval heroes: one, wooden legs
and arms and bandages, by help of which,
for the trifling sum of two shillings a day,
thieves could procure means of attracting
public sympathy. Children in any quantity
were to be had from the same traders at
ninepence a day per head, to represent a
starving family. If these were hired of their
own parents instead of at the agency, the
commission for their use was sixpence a-head
only. In the Devil's Acre, also, men maintained
schools of boys, for the purpose of
sending them out pickpocketing for their
master's benefit, or to assist housebreakers
in getting into dwellings.

In the third year of Mr. Walker's ministry,
the captain of the thieves, who had been
looked up to for counsel and advice in all
cases of emergency, and who had many a
time raised among his friends subscriptions
for a criminal's defence, fell sick and died.
Two mourning-coaches and twelve cabs full
of bereaved vagabonds followed the hearse to
this man's grave in a popular cemetery.

The shifts and contrivances by which Mr.
Walker's parishioners managed to elude
justice were worthy of a Russian diplomatist,
and their domestic arrangements in
trapdoors and shifting panels rivalled in mystery
even Udolpho. One gentleman, who had
made counterfeit coin for years, had his door
filled from top to bottom with sharp-pointed
nails, to prevent any pushing against it from
the outside. Another had two steps of his
stairs hung upon hinges, and used those
stairs as the door into his bedroom.

Improved as much of this has been, by law,
by ragged unions, and by missionary enterprise,
since Mr. Walker first began his up-hill
work in Westminster, enough remains, as
we need hardly say, to make the reformation
of a discharged prisoner, driven back
among old companions and pursuits, as hopeless
as can be. Even natural affection grows
up stunted in such stony soil. A widow
(whose husband—a burglar—had been hung
in the natural course of events), a widow
with four children, kept a lodging-house for
young men, who trained her little ones for
their profession, thieving, with the mother's
fullest approbation. She lived to see one
son after the other taken from her and t
ransported as a felon, without any sign of sorrow.
Only when her last boy was drowned in his
passage out by the sinking of the convict-
ship, she cursed the nation and the government
which hurried fine young men into
eternity by sending them abroad in rotten
vessels.

Even in Westminster, however, and in the
Devil's Acre, Mr. Walker had the reward of
a fair success. Preaching in places where
the lips grow black and the stomach sickens
from the intense foulness of the atmosphere
is no holiday work.

The son of a poor widow with a small
family, who used all her energies to provide
means for their support, sometimes by
begging, but by washing whenever she could
find employment, went astray. The children
being necessarily left often to their own
devices, soon found companions, who led them,
from upsetting a fruit-stall in the street and
stealing its contents, to picking pockets and
to burglary. The widow's son became a
thorough cracksman. After many interviews
and conversations, this man was persuaded
to receive instruction, and to undertake
industrial employment. After a few months,
he went out as emigrant to one of the colonies,
from which he sends from time to time
remittances of money earned by honest
industry to aid his mother and family.

A young man of twenty years of age, had
lost his parents early, and was obliged to shift
for himself. Begging, he said, was not the
profession he liked, but his haggard
appearance was such that nobody would ever
give him work; he had had no education,
and was led astray. "I have," he said,
"been ten times in prison. I have often tried
to get an honest living, and never could
succeed. I went at first without food three
days at a time, rather than steal." This
youth was found at a low lodging-house in a
most miserable condition, was taught, and
employed. After giving evidence enough
of moral change he was helped to America,
whence he writes good accounts of his well-
being.

A youth of seventeen presented himself to