r the East is

m of human faces, with all their varied passions-an awful

iverse," adds Thackeray in the same spirit, "walks about under your Hat, and under mine." This latter reflection occurs to me often as I walk about London, and note all its many "sorts

re than anywhere else, you realize that "it takes all sorts to make a world"; for the inhabitants var

iar ways of life and conversation. In short, the inhabitants of St. James's, notwithstanding they li

way Bo

re-houses, and where recently erected "model dwellings" for workmen flourish in the very hearts of the Grosvenor and Cadogan Estates; and there is a "West in the East," as testified by the pleasant wide streets of comfortable roomy houses that abound in the near suburbs of East and South London. Yet, it

righteous scorn for the "factory hand" who spends her hard-won earnings on a feathered hat and a plush cape, the slum-dweller is, on the other hand, quite equally scandalized at the "lady's" brazen boldness in wearing a décolleté dress: "To think of 'er 'avin' the fice ter go hout with them nyked showlders, 'ow 'orrid!" the factory girl will say, from out the street-door crowd at an evening "crush." Even a veiled Turkish lady, from the secluded harem, could hardly show more genuine feeling at the unpleasant spectacle. No, our ways are not as their ways. Their conventionalities are quite as strict, even stricter, than ours. Possibly to them, even our speech sounds just as faulty as theirs to us; probably they think us very ill-bred because we do not constantly reiterate the words "Mrs. Smith," or "Mrs. Jones,"

ity T

le for general frowsiness, a look of "ingrained" dirt, and an indescribable air of having seen better days; Chelsea, by a certain art-serged female, and long-haired male community with an artistic,-and, yes,-perhaps a well-pleased and self-satisfied air; the "City," by its black-coated business men; Whitechapel, by its coster girls with fringes; Somers Town and Lisson Grove, by their odoriferous cats and cabbag

tten a haunting littl

street, where

nd of the whe

failing l

in the

the pulses of

es with the P

victory

ng people g

stle and pas

death, are the

n the s

ée to an "exclusive" mansion to a peer's status,-can be bought with money. Here, more than anywhere else, money is imperatively needed. Even the poor hawkers who live in unspeakable slums, lined with cats and cabbages, in Lisson Grove, might, if they lived in the country, at least have clean cottages, gardens, and pure air. With the same income on which you are poor in town, you will be well-to-do, nay, rich in the country. House-rent,-indirect taxation,-the vicinity of tempting shops,-and amusements take the surplus. The attractions of town must indeed be great to the poor; for, if their wages be higher, their life is infinitely lower. But it is

eys and a basement,-all of the same yellowish brick, all begrimed by the same smoke, every door-knocker of the same pattern, every window-blind hung in the same way, and the same corner 'public' on either side, flaming in the hazy distance." The East End is very conservati

" than rich people's area gates and chilly grandeur. If the West End takes its pleasure by driving in the Park, the East, on the other hand, finds its relaxation on the tops of 'buses and trams, in walking about the flaring, gas-jetted street, in looking into shop windows, or in driving about in all the pride of a private, special coster's cart. If the rich do not know how the poor live, the poor, on t

y've souls

t a hovel to your d

she does not suffer for want of medical advice; she bundles it up quickly in a shawl, and runs with it to the nearest hospital, where, if the authorities are somewhat curt, she at any rate gets plenty of sympathy from all the other mothers in the big hospital waiting-room. Even that large, shabby crowd that, on visiting-days, await the opening of the hospital doors, so unutterably pathetic to the looker-on, is not, perhaps, without its alleviations. It is

ical, ever-changing streets, with their myriad attractions, their boundless possibilities. Then, the children of the poor are not brought up as useless luxuries, but, from tender years, are required to contribute their share of help to the household; and what the average child loves above all things is to feel itself of use. Dir

well the sad ranks of the "submerged tenth": poor creatures whose misery shivers in fireless garrets and damp cellars, whose empty stomachs call in vain for food; and whose only outlook

y" with a sort of chilly grandeur; and, though their acquaintance with Holy Writ is generally slight, through all life's troubles their favourite text is ever this: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Thus, they ar

Hol

day or two;-afterwards, they are too often conscious of slight boredom. At first, they delight in the fact that "it's so green all rarnd,-right to the sky,-with no roads, and no walls,-and no trespsin boards,-and no pleecemen;" but these joys have their limitations,-and, after a fortnight's holiday,-even poor slum children are generally glad to get

with the help of pins, or demolishing saucerfuls of the savoury cockle; vendors of penny toys; all these, combined with the voluble "patter" of the lively shop-boys, make a veritable pandemonium. Shops are full; barrows of all kinds drive a brisk trade; velvet-cushioned trams ply up and down the big highway, which extends, apparently almost into infinity, up the long Mile End Road. (Tram-lines, in London, seem more or less confined to the uninspiring North and East and their suburbs.) Ugly and uninvigorating enough by day, the streets, by night, invest themselves with mysterious glamour and brightness. Like some murky theatre when the deceiving footlights are lit, this, too, is a "stag

owards making Toynbee Hall what it is, is due the chief honour for the successful working of this Institution, primarily intended to bring "sweetness and light" into the darkened, unlovely lives of the London poor. The name of Arnold Toynbee, the young and enthusiastic Oxford man and reformer, has been immortalised in this pla

orlds, so

one, such t

what had ne

strong as th

....

wraith of

, while the

folds the l

would have f

f some twenty residents,-young university men of strong convictions,-who come here both to learn and to teach;-to teach their less fortunate brothers,-to learn how the poor live. At its hospitable door the sick and suffe

The ancient monasteries dissuaded,-if anything,-knowledge, and aspiration generally, in the "masses": Toynbee Hall encourages and promotes it; it is thus a physician to the mind even more than to the body. It raises the aims, improves the tastes, and widens the horizons of its disciples; it satisfies the cravings of the poor for better things; but it must first inculcate such cravings. Within its walls the poor and struggling artisan may enjoy concerts, lectures, pictures;-may lear

others,-institutions more or less of the kind; and the Passmore Edwards Institute, in Tavistock Place, has similar aims. But to Toynbee Hall is due the introd

,-fill the listener with a strange feeling almost akin to tears? Not even outside a country church is one so affected. Here it seems to bring the calm of Eternity into the fitful fever of the moment. The picturesqueness, alone, of religi

and the fierc

ualid streets o

aver, through h

s, look'd thri

cher there I

k'd, how fare yo

d he; 'for I o

thoughts of Christ

! as long as

rk of everl

ling senses'

and to right th

l thou labourest

eaven thou hop'st

but used by Mr. Ashbee as the convenient location for his well-known "Guild and School of Handicraft." Built partly by a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren, with panelled rooms, oak staircase, and large garden, its solid dignity is well suited to its new and living pu

nights, when it makes a practice of giving away its remaining stock. Bond Street is, in a manner, the "Aldgate High Street" of the fashionable world: here, at four o'clock or so in the afternoon, are to be seen the "gilded youth,"-the dandies of the day;-here the smart world flock for afternoon tea; and here fine ladies walk even unattended, and satisfy, as eagerly as their Whitechapel sisters, their feminine cravings for shop-windows. Who was it who first said that no real woman could ever pass a hat-shop? The truth of this remark may here be attested. The very smartest of motor-cars,-of horses,-of "turn-outs" gener

ed and charming byways. Behind the vestry in Mount Street, for instance, in the passage that leads into the church in Farm Street, you might think yourself thousands of miles away from Mayfair. This c

rawn up on the fashionable side of the street! They are "backmewsy" little streets of saddening aspect, such as Dickens's typical "Mews Street, Grosvenor Square," that contained the residence of Mr. Tite Barnacle, with "squeezed houses," each with "a ramshackle bowed front, little d

ind end of Mews Street; and the same corner contained an establishment much frequented about early morning and twilight, for the purchase of wine-bottles and kitchen-stuff. Punch's shows used to lean against the dead wall in Mews Street, while their proprietors were dining elsewhere; and the dogs of the neighbourhood made appointments to meet in the same locality. Yet there were two or three small airles

at that period in Harley Street, Cavendish-

w like the street the two dinner-rows of people who take their stand by the street will be. The expressionless uniform twenty houses, all to be knocked and rung at in the same form, all approachable by the same dull steps, all fended off by the same pattern of railing, all with the same impracticable fire-escapes, the same inconvenient fixtures in their heads, and everything without exception to be taken a

them, at any rate, to boast occasionally of an "Idea." But the "Smart Set," with the plutocrats and the Merdles, has mov

tirely on which side the fault lies? Where these leaders of society shop now, other generations of fair dead ladies, gone "with the snows of yesteryear," have in their turn enjoyed the dear delights of lace, millinery, and jewels. Here the "ladies of St. James's," in the eighteenth century, revelled in their "lutestrings," "dimitys," "paduasoys"; and, to flaunt it over their less fortunate sisters, bought the very newest new t

rtius of St. J

ux' cavalry p

ke the field i

gent

s "literary breakfasts." Of old the most exclusive gathering in this region was "Almack's," ruled by the famous Lady Jersey, "the seventh heaven of the fashionable world." It is situated in King Street, and is now "Willis's Rooms." St. James's, as a rule, is "exclusive" enough still; but the neighbourhood has in other ways gone through many changes. The great house built by Nash for the Regent,-Carl

of London now-the mart of news, of politics, of scandal, of rumour-the English forum, so to speak, where men discuss the last despatch from the Crimea, the last speech of Lord Derby, the next move of Lord John. And, now and then, to a few antiquarians, whose thoughts are with the past rather than with the present, it is a memorial of old times and old people, and Pall Mall is our Palmyra. Look! About this spot, Tom of Ten Thousand was killed by K?nigsmarck's gang. In that red house Gainsborough lived, and Culloden Cumberland, George III.'s uncle. Yonder is Sarah Marlborough's palace, just as it stood when that termagant occupied it. At 25, Walter Scott used to live; at the house, now No. 79, and occupied by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, resided Mrs. Eleanor Gwynn, comedian. How oft

cad

. It has for three centuries been the Fleet Street of the well-to-do poets, of the leisured literary world

If you would know our manner of living, 'tis thus:-We rise by nine, and those that frequent great men's levées find entertainment at them till eleven, or, as at Holland, go to tea tables. About twelve, the beau-monde assembles in several coffee or c

es, all more or less modern; and the day has, in the last two centuries, come to begin earlier and end later. Coffee-houses, in Defoe's time, were the necessary ladders to rising fame talent; thus, the bo

"business" air that has of late invaded it. Of the people you meet here,-elderly gentlemen with nothing, perhaps, very remarkable about them, to outward view;-or smart young men, with well-polished boots and hats, and faultless dress-coats,-it is safe to say

cratic St. James's Square-already,

ve all that's

a coach to t

use in St. Ja

says Lord Rosebery, referring to London's many associations, "can be less imposing, or less interesting in themselves,-than the railings of St. James's Square? Yet, you cannot touch those railings-hideous as they are and dull as are the h

ve in. Yet, here, too, the East is still present in the West. Round the corner, as I gaze, comes a pitiful group,-a tawdry woman, her vo

sowl! Angelic so

n fields-and Hocea

ar-a

errible that I am moved to give her a shilling to go away and remove her poor suffering babies.... But,-at the angle of Waterloo Place,-another phantom is stationed; a wretchedly-clothed creature, evidently on the look-out for a job. He might himself be an incarnation of Famine. His cheeks are hollow and cadav

any-feasting and fancy-free-if, pale with sickness, horrible in destitution, broken by despair, body by body, they were laid upon the soft carpet, one beside the chair of every guest, would only the crumbs of the dainties be cast to them-would only a passing glance, a passing thought

d pathetic sketch of the Submerged of the Great City is tha

ut the stre

t I han

little w

imes the mor

the year I

ft, a gho

e worn to thre

hows here

ce like sea

beard, my t

nous and s

yes untrou

m eastern w

t Street and

pleasant

m softly wi

know that

out a li

handicraf

ve conqu

chosen the

hope, nor fe

breath on pa

alms, alo

es