have seen and to what I have thought. I make no apology for doing this again; for while I hold it to be my duty to acquaint myself with all that affects the welfare of the community in which I am called to labour as a minister of Jesus Christ, I also deem it right that you, as a Christian people, should be equally well apprised of the facts, that we may all take counsel together as to what we can do to remedy the evils we see, and to bring about a moral and spiritual change among those whose needs find fitting expression in dirt and rags, in drunkenness and depravity.

'It is our own business to know these things. If Christians neglect this work, who will attend to it? If those who make professions of religion stand idly by, and let the great evils multiply themselves in festering fecundity, whose hands can we expect to be raised to help-whose hearts are likely to be touched with supreme compassion ?'

Of the things that Mr. Street sees, the following will serve as samples:-'We entered a great street, which stretches away at one end until it touches the open country, and looks upon trees, and grass, and peaceful cattle, and has clustered near to it the pretty homes of comfortable and happy citizens, who, when business hours are over, can breathe the fresh, exhilarating air, and from their windows look out on blooming flowers and spreading lawns-and which burrows away at the other end down steep inclines, drawing its sides more closely together as it goes, until down many steps it touches the banks of the deep and hurrying river. All along the lower part of this street, which gradually grew darker as we went on, there were passages on either side, dark as midnight, stretching I know not whither, but out of which there seemed ever to come processions of miserablyclad men, and women, and children, whose wretchedness was all the more conspicuous when they emerged into the light that streamed from brokers' and publicans' windows. In one of these, as we passed, there were sounds of strife; but all was darkness, and who were the combatants, and why they fought-what blows were given, and how much harm was done we knew not. We were going among too many such scenes, and our dangers would be sufficiently great for us to plunge into the darkness of this place, and interfere in what we could not see.

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Turning aside from this long and busy street, we plunged into a narrower street, where darkness seemed to be regnant. But as our eyes got accustomed to what was required from them, we saw indistinctly the road along which we went. A great church-with a style of architecture almost peculiar to itselfwith its thickly-peopled graveyard, occupied one side; and close up to itso near that a man's arm would reach across-houses were built for the living, who are thus companioned close with the dead. On the other side of the steep and narrow gully were other houses, where the poor do congregate. I peeped in at some, and wondered at the sights I saw. I asked if the large church, hemmed in as it was, got filled with worshippers; but I was told that its seats were comparatively empty, and that its influence was very slight upon the mass of human life about it. "And yet," said my informant, "the minister is kind and assiduous, and always ready to go among the poorest of the poor."

At the foot of the steep and dirty street I have described, we came to one of the smallest-perhaps the smallestof the common lodging-houses. Stumbling through the darkness until we came to the door, we entered. The door opened at once upon the kitchen, where a great fire was blazing; by the side of it were three children-girls, I thinkhuddling close together. In front was a rather good-looking and tolerably well-dressed young woman, frying a herring; by her side was the good woman of the house; and at a table-a small one-in a corner, and on a little stool, was a man without coat or shoes, with dirty shirt, and unkempt and matted hair, and a look that was almost wild, though certainly intelligent, sitting pouring out some tea. The young woman, I was told, was married; and when I was taken through the bedrooms, I found that she and her husband, with two other married couples, occupied the same room-a small, confined place, with a window looking out upon eaves and chimneys, containing three beds. This plan of putting several married people into one room is adopted in all the lodging-houses I saw. In some places there were three, in some four, beds, for three or four couples, with perhaps several children. It is true, the beds and bedding were kept tolerably clean; the walls were well whitewashed, and the places were, of course, under

regular

regular police inspection; but a plan like this is altogether bad and vicious, and productive of callousness and indifference, leading, I need not say, to every vice and to all immorality. It is not enough to regulate a state of things like this it needs to be revolutionised.

Our steps were next turned to a place well known to the police here-a narrow, steep, and dirty "bank." It was crowded with people. Men and women were sitting upon the floor of the street, "getting the air," as my conductor said; but the air was so vicious and noxious that the less they got of it the better. The refuse of the houses was thrown into the streets, and we were compelled to pick our way. Here were little, dirty shops, choked with a perfect medley of things; public-houses and beershops, full to overflowing with tipplers; girls and women standing at the doors of many of them, acting as lures to youths and men. Out of these public-houses men and women were coming drunk and incapable. Here a husband was remonstrating with a drunken wife; there a wife and daughter, or friend, were trying to persuade a drunken man to go home; while, in another place, a crew of them were laughing, swearing, and blaspheming together. It was a sort of Pandemonium. It seemed as though night had yielded up its dark and awful creatures, and let them disport themselves for a while in the gaslight. Out of the grim passages on either side of the street came the customers of the public-houses; and back again they went seven-fold worse and more demonish than when they came. I held my breath sometimes, for the horrid sights distressed me deeply. At times I put my hat over my eyes, not to see, though I had come to see. It was a positive relief to get out of this busy scene of filth and drunkenness and defilement, into a more quiet but not less sinful region.

་

'Now we went into a court, well macadamised, and clean, so far as I could tell in the almost thick darkness, and found two other common lodginghouses. They were filled with motley groups of foreigners. The kitchens of both places were crowded. In one there were about twenty persons, men, women, and children, of different nationalities. Many of them were there just for a night or two, while others had been staying there for months. Some of the faces were quite a study. There were

three children whose singular beauty arrested attention. They looked strangely out of place in that crowded kitchen. The mother of these children-or she who seemed to be their mother-had a fine and striking face; not beautiful, though it must have been beautiful at one time, but full of such a melancholy sadness as pained one to see it. She never looked up when we entered, spoke to nobody while we stayed, but sat looking at the children, and thinking. There was a history, a sad history, in that face and manner; it told of disappointed hope, of struggle, of despair. I am sure there had been a time when no dream even had prophesied that she and her children would be in a common lodging-house, surrounded with dirt and rags, and familiarised with coarseness and crime. But, oh! there were many histories cooped up in these two houses. Many faces told tales to make the heart ache; tales of neglected youth, of perverted man and womanhood, of debauchery, of degradation, and of crime. Here, as in all the lodginghouses I saw, there were the same indecent arrangements for sleeping, and the same want of proper means for personal cleanliness.

'But I must pass on. I rambled through dark and narrow streetsclose, orowded, and noisy. Everywhere drunkenness and ribaldry. At almost every corner altercations and quarrels. The darkness was so great, and the pavements were, or seemed to be, so uneven, that I frequently stumbled, and once or twice, but for the friendly arm of my conductor, I should have fallen. We went up successive flights of steps, coming at each step upon passages opening into holes and courts where the people dwelt. At every turn we came upon what seemed to me to be human warrens, out of which came swarms of children, ragged, barefoot, and dirty. It was evident that, bad as the lodginghouses might be, these places, where little control could be exercised, were infinitely worse. Some of the property (I would be ashamed to hold such property) seemed to be tumbling to pieces, and to be in danger of falling upon the inhabitants, and burying them in the ruins.

I have said how few religious agencies were at work here-how scant was the supply of school and sanctuary. Besides this, there are no open places of recreation, no playgrounds, no clubs,

no

no means of amusement; but there were public-houses and beerhouses in great abundance. These were well lightedlooked cheerful and attractive. There was music in them; here perhaps only a barrel-organ, there simply a fiddler screaming out his Irish jigs, but in most of these places music of some kind. To say nothing about the terrible attractions of the drink, and the power it exercises over its deluded victims, is it wonderful that such places, which provide cheerful company, a warm fireside, and merry music, should be full of customers? Can you expect men and women to stay in the miserable kennels provided for them in the thickly clustered houses near to the Quayside? I do not say that these wretched hovels create the public-houses- for I think

most of the hovels are made by the drink-but I am sure these things act one upon another, and aid each other with a mighty power in the work of human shame and degradation. What precise influence they exercise upon one another I cannot determine, but certainly wretchedness and facilities for drinking are found closely shouldered together. It seems very strange that in the very poorest district of a town so many public-houses should be found to thrive. But it is as true as it is strange. By some means poverty and squalor sustain a vast number of these houses. The deeper the degradation of the people the more glaring the prosperity of the drink-traffickers. Is there not something terribly suggestive in this? Healthy trade flies these regions; no ordinary pursuit has any chance of prosperity; the shopkeepers, as a class, are few and far between, and they look almost as poor as their customers; but there is a great traffic in strong drink, and the dealers are prosperous. What must be the nature of that prosperity when it is found associated with so much that is miserable, wretched, and degrading? Surely this traffic is a disease of our social system, and would be removed in a healthy state of public opinion.

I was shown one particular spot on the Quayside which was very suggestive. A small block of houses, perhaps a dozen in all, contained nine publichouses-four or five, I forget which, being next door to each other, and the remainder with not more than a single house intervening. I was curious to see whether there were many customers

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in these. In my hasty glances I saw in each place men and women, in some youths and girls, sitting togetherdrinking. Rags and tatters, dirt and ignorance, drink and degradation companioned together.

'Coming back across the river I went on again into the gloom and darkness. To a large lodging-house I was taken, where seventy people slept. It seemed to be kept as clean as such a place could be, and the man with his two female assistants evidently worked very hard; but what such a place must be, where seventy people slept every night, besides young children-where the same inde-cent plans were in operation (nobody seeming to think them indecent), where young and old of both sexes had to meet in the same common kitchens, and cook and eat and wash together, and where other things, which I cannot speak of, were necessarily taking place - what such a place must be I must leave you to conjecture. We were taken through all the rooms. Some rooms were empty, the lodgers not yet having come; others were occupied by some already asleep and some preparing for bed. Now and then coarse and blasphemous words were spoken-the worst from female lips; but on the whole everybody seemed indifferent to us and to our inspection. However clean the lodging-house keeper might make his rooms, he could not make his lodgers clean. I could not avoid seeing, as I passed by the sleepers, how thoroughly dirty some of them were; and the thought of the constant repetition of this sickened me. these people keep pretty quiet?" I asked. "Oh, they quarrel enough at times." "Do they generally come to you sober?" "Well, sir, they do sometimes," was the answer; sobriety appearing to be the exceptional thing.

"Do

The

'But these lodging-houses are well kept, and are under regular police inspection; and, upon the whole, the wonder is that such houses, in such localities, can be kept so well. private dwellings, where the police have no right to go, contain wretchedness, dirt, misery, and destitution, far greater. I was able to go into a few of these. I need not say that in some there was evidence of thrift, frugality, and prudence. Thank God, all is not bad and black! Even in these dark regions there is some light--perhaps far more than I suppose. But I do not intend to speak of this now-only of the darker