some of the worst districts in East and South London, presented a report containing a mass of information, with a final conclusion in favour of the claims of the latter. Pembroke accordingly selected a district in Walworth, between the Walworth and Old Kent Roads, about a mile south-east of the Elephant and Castle, and here work was begun in March, 1886.

Although the area covered (says the Record) could stand within St. Paul's Churchyard, the population, nevertheless, is quite 5,000. Two, three, or even four families are crowded into every house, yet there are no large employers of labour; seven public-houses, a common lodging-house, and the police-station being the only buildings of any size. The aristocracy of the population are a few well-to-do artisans and some employés from the Bricklayers' Arms Station.

Opening a Mission in such a district is not always smooth sailing. The men, in particular, entertain a deep-rooted suspicion of "the parson," and dreading religious pitfalls, even in concerts and entertainments, send in a scout to report if the proceedings are "all right," and not "a take-in." The children, too, proved at first absolutely unmanageable, and the first Sunday-school, opened on March 28, 1886, was the scene of a perfect riot, requiring the forcible expulsion of the juvenile mob. The attendance now averages 400, and the disorderly elements are no longer in the ascendant. The savagery of the men is partially tamed by the charms of fiction, and they condescend to appear at the recreative Sunday evenings instituted by the clergyman, when a chapter of "Treasure Island" or some similar work is read aloud. Many of the juniors are amongst the newspaper and match boys thronging Fleet Street and the Strand, and a friendly "Hallo, Mr. Sturges!" from their ranks sometimes salutes the missioner as he passes. Accommodation is provided in

the Mission-house for graduates and undergraduates, who come to give temporary help, at the modest charges of 175. 6d. per week for board, 2s. 6d. for house expenses, and 7s. 6d. for rent, if the term of residence exceed eight weeks. The total expenditure of this Mission is about £850 per annum.

The Trinity College Mission differs from the others in nominally embracing the entire parish of St. George's, Camberwell, the living, which became vacant shortly after its establishment in 1885, having been conferred by the Bishop on the Rev. Norman Campbell, the first missioner. The curates supported by the College, however, concentrate their efforts within a smaller area, with a population of about 5,000. The massive antique furniture of the old house, 113 Wells Street, in which they all live together, is a gift of the College. An attempt is made to keep a complete register of all the inhabitants

of the parish, a somewhat formidable task, as it contains 2,545 houses, besides the immense "blocks" accommodating sometimes as many as 2,600 individuals. A large scale Ordnance map, on which every house is numbered, serves as an index, and each district visitor is furnished with a book and a set of forms to be filled up. The information thus collected is posted into ledgers with the assistance of undergraduates who come as visitors. Among the adjuncts to

the Mission are a Men's Club, with billiards and other amusements, a Women's Guild, meeting monthly, and a charitable Kitchen, which supplies soup in winter and invalid food all the year round.

The Clare College Mission, also opened in 1885, has, as its field of operations, the Dalston Grove district of All Saints parish, Rotherhithe, with a population of 4,000. Open-air services were held pending the completion of the church, which can now seat a congregation of 200. The first two years were spent in the preliminary work of gaining the confidence of the people, and the missioner, the Rev. A. E. King, was able to report, as a satisfactory result, that whereas at first he was only allowed to enter I house in 30, he was later admitted to 1 in 5.

In the same year, 1885, were founded the two Public School Missions of Wellington and Charterhouse, the former in Walworth, near that of Pembroke College, the latter in a district carved out of the parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark, principally inhabited by brushmakers, costermongers, dock-labourers, and porters from the Borough Market.

Of later date is the Caius College Mission, founded in Battersea in 1887, but more properly termed a settlement or hostel, as it is a purely secular beneficent association, and maintains no preaching or ecclesiastical establishment.

The youngest of the College Missions, dating also from 1887, is that of Corpus Christi, which has indeed scarcely passed the preliminary stage of the struggle for existence. Its district, about half a mile square, with 4,000 inhabitants, is a slice of Christ Church parish, Camberwell, lying between the Old Kent Road and the Surrey Canal. Here the history of many quarters of South London repeats itself, and what was once a pleasant suburb has degenerated into a series of slums, abandoned by the divorce between respectability and poverty to hawkers, costermongers, fish-curers, and other hangers-on to the skirts of civilised society. Service held in a railway arch, pending the construction of a permanent church or chapel, attracts a congregation even amidst this miscellaneous population, and we read that the accommodation, such as it is, sometimes proves

insufficient, and that at the Harvest Festival of September 30, 1889, over a hundred had to be turned away for want of space. A site has been obtained for the necessary buildings, and a fund is being raised for their construction.

A working-men's institute for evening recreation has been so successful in interesting the members that they devoted their leisure to themselves fitting up and improving the premises hired for their meetings, painting, papering, and throwing two rooms into one, to make a large reading-room. Some of them also co-operate in the work of the Mission, and one of its most steady assistants is a lighterman, whose ministrations among his fellows are at least free from all taint of aristocratic condescension.

The Sunday-school, held in the Canterbury Road Board School, has recently required increased accommodation for its growing numbers. It has 629 children on its books, and the attendance, which averages 75 per cent., would be larger and more regular were it not that want of proper clothing, boots and shoes, &c., keeps many of the scholars at home. Their spirit of self-reliance is early developed. Witness a little maiden of five, who, being met by a policeman trudging across Greenwich Park on her return from a festive gathering there, rejected the escort of the guardian of public safety, declaring that she "preferred to walk alone." Physical prowess goes a long way towards winning the confidence of the boys, from one of whom, during a holiday outing, the fleetness of foot displayed by the missioner (an old "blue" athlete) elicited the tribute of admiration addressed to his wife: "That bloke of yours can run!" The exclamation, despite its irreverent form, was made in a perfectly respectful spirit.

During five months, from November 1888 to March 1889, free dinners of soup and bread were given twice a week at the Missionhouse to about 250 children, served in batches of eighty or ninety at a time, at a cost of about 3d. per head. The standing expenses of this Mission are £460 per annum, exclusive of charities, which are provided for by special subscriptions.

We have thus, in the entire sum of various kinds of work done by Oxford and Cambridge in East and South London, a very large contribution to the charitable organisation of the metropolis. Nor can its advantages be measured by the benefits conferred on the recipients of beneficence alone. It reacts on those who bestow it, not merely in the moral and religious sense, but in practical form as a training for the avocations of after life. To a large proportion of the graduates of the sister Universities thus brought into personal

contact with the poor, will fall the duties of rural administration necessitating that bond of sympathy with their lowlier neighbours which only intimate comprehension of their feelings can give. In the formation of the links binding class to class we have here a system of incalculable value to the State itself.

To others again, who have to make their way in a professional career, knowledge of human nature in all its ramifications will be a useful addition to their outfit of purely technical science. To all, the moral education gained by the practice of occasional self-sacrifices by study of the wants of others, by glimpses into the abyss of misery surrounding their own prosperous and carefully-guarded lives, will be a more valuable factor in the formation of character than any branch of their academic training. And it must be remembered that with these captains of the rising generation, the flower of her manhood, the standard-bearers of her honour, the coming leaders of her thought and action, lies the future of England.

HAMLET E CLARK.

FURTHER CONTRIBUTION TO THE CHAUCER BIBLIOGRAPHY.

R. ALLAN PARK PATON, the Editor of the "Hamnet Shakespeare," writes expressing his interest in the subject of Chaucer Bibliography, which he describes as "a perplexing but fascinating region" for research. He supplies also particulars of a black-letter copy in the Greenock Library, of which he is the librarian. This, from his description, is obviously one of the editions of 1561, a manuscript title declaring that it is "Imprinted at London by John [qy. Ihon] Kyngstone for John [qy. Ihon] Wight anno 1561." Like many other copies, it lacks all after folio 355. The cause why many copies end at this point is obvious. Books of a venerable age are especially subject to ill usage at the beginning and end. The words on folio 355, "Thus endeth the workes of Geffray Chaucer," and the general appearance of the book, convey to the unobservant or inexperienced purchaser the idea that the book ends here. If the succeeding pages containing Lydgate's "Storie of Thebes" are mutilated, accordingly, the vendor cuts out the whole, and allows the book to end with what appears to be a termination. The genuine conclusion of the volume is as follows. First appears in Italic type: Here now endeth, as ye maie see,

The destruction of Thebes the Citee.

Then in Gothic type:

Imprinted at Lon-/ don, by Ihon Kyngston, for Ihon / Wight, dwellyng in Poules Churchyarde | Anno 1561./

Beneath is a device of a chest, bearing on it a winged female head and bust, from which springs some conventional foliage.

M1

THE 1561 CHAUCER IN THE GREENOCK LIBRARY.

R. PATON describes at some length certain features in the edition before him, and notably the illustrated title-pages to the "Canterbury Tales" and the "Romaunt of the Rose." These curious illustrations, showing a series of English kings and nobles, are not, however, confined to this edition, but are common to many