Commons when a deputation of hardy working men, representing sixty-eight trades, came up to speak about model lodging-houses. There was no sentiment or nonsense about them, but it was evident from every sentence how painfully the ugliness oppressed them: dreadful sameness,' 'dreary whitewash,'' miserable monotony,' and similar expressions occurred over and over again from them as they protested against the uniform, barrack-like look of many blocks of buildings.

To come now to the musical branch of the Kyrle work. We have a choir which meets every Wednesday evening either for practice at. the West End of the town, or for performance in poor neighbourhoods. Its main function is to perform oratorios in churches, chapels, and halls. The company, as far as possible, accept invitations to perform in large and central buildings, and go to different quarters of London. The singers reach home very late at night, owing to the enormous distances. Often they have to go as far beyond Aldgate station as that is from Hyde Park; in fact, at Aldgate they feel almost home, so far does that waste of small houses extend which we call the East End. This fact serves to show how far many of the audiences live from the main centres of good, cheap music. Sometimes the church is filled with the very poor, to some of whom the impression made by the music is evidently new: the worn face often looks as if the listener were wrapped away, penetrating in thought into some vista of awe, wonder, and peace. Sometimes the church is crowded by working people, intelligent, very attentive, and tolerably comfortable-looking, but, one would guess, rarely carried beyond the somewhat prosaic routine of their daily lives.

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May I say here how small and mean appears to me the common habit of indifference about helping industrious, thrifty working people, who show no evidence of want? Indeed, I notice not only an indifference about helping them, but a want of interest in them. There is a depraved hunger for rags, sharp need, and slums, which pollutes some who profess charity. I should like to go where there is condensed misery,' a lady said lately in the cheeriest tone. My dear madam,' I should like to have said, are you indeed so uneducated and dull? You have, I presume, never felt any. If you had known what misery was, you might have known what blessing it brought if rightly met; but if you had yourself known what meeting it thus costs, what ruin and havoc it leaves, if the human soul is overwhelmed by it instead of riding on the crest of its great wave, you would pause a little before you take courage to look at it.' But, short of this utter callousness, there is a certain excited temper abroad which almost amounts to a longing to see extreme want. There is, in a court I know well, a great blank, high, bare, black wall, which rises within a few feet of the back windows of a number of rooms inhabited by the poor. I have shown it to many ladies and gentlemen, and have said how cheerless it

made the rooms. Some feel it, and seem to realise what sitting opposite to it day after day would be. Some say it isn't so very dark, and almost seem to add, Can you show us nothing worse?' Then I never do. I know it is partly a difference of imaginative sympathy, not necessarily of kindliness, but to me the want felt by those who have little of this world's goods is too solemn to disclose it to those who haven't imagination enough to feel it other than as an exciting show. Those who haven't the power to feel even a slight pain affecting any man as if it hurt them too, those who cannot enter into the sense of satisfaction in rendering a little fuller and gayer the somewhat same life of worthy working people, who by thrift and industry have raised, or kept, themselves above the brink of pauperism, can have no human sympathy which can entitle them to lift the veil of greater want, or enter the haunts of sin. So at least I feel.

To return to the music. Besides the choir, for which additional members are needed, the musical secretary is glad to receive the names of those who will sing or play at any of the numerous smaller concerts in school and mission-rooms, for which help is asked. Fourteen oratorios have been performed by the choir during the past year, and thirty-three smaller concerts.

One of the musical branches owes its rise and main support to the kindness of Lady Brabazon. It has for its object the provision of concerts in hospitals and workhouses. Thirty-one performances have taken place during the past year. Singers and other performers are gladly welcomed for these concerts also. I ought to point out that money is needed for the musical branch of the Society. So large a body of volunteers requires-so my experience teaches-always a certain amount of paid work if their full power is to be made available. Kind as they are, one cannot expect conductors, organists, accompanists, and professional singers to give their time week after week; then there is often printing to be paid for, and the hire of pianos. Our performances cost about 1287. in the past year, an average of about 1. 12s. each. The choir has done much, it has brought in a large number of those who give valuable time freely, and we ask earnestly for funds to carry on the work.

All

distribution of flowers. Many, I hope, send flowers not be understood as for

Let me say a few words about the must know how much pleasure it gives. somewhere for the poor, and I would a moment suggesting any alteration to those who now send to anyone. But to those who do not I should like to point out that we have special facilities for introducing flowers among those who are not easily reached by other organisations. The sick and old in hospitals and workhouses have many claims to every sort of alleviation of their condition, and those who come to class or library where flowers are distributed should certainly have them too if possible;

but let it be remembered also that we have a machinery for giving them quickly, and therefore quite fresh, in the worst courts among those who have not yet reached the point of availing themselves.of any of the good work near them. The houses under the care of myself and the ladies working with me contain a number of such families, and our frequent visits to every room bring us, and with us the flowers, into the homes of those who for various reasons are not going to any school, chapel, or mission-room.

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I come now to the largest and most costly branch of the Kyrle Society's work-that of providing Open Spaces. During the past year three disused burial grounds have been handed over to the Society to be laid out, previous to their being taken over by the several vestries of the parishes in which they are situated; funds to the amount of 7007. have been collected, which will enable us to complete all three one of them is already open to the public, the other two will be opened as soon as the grass is ready. After long negotiations with the vestries concerned, arrangements have just been made that they should take over and open to the public another such garden in the south of London, so soon as the Kyrle Society has laid it out. The spring is coming on, and, if the year is not to be lost, the work ought to be put in hand at once. It will cost, I believe, about 300l., of which 50l. is in hand. This burial ground is situated in a very crowded neighbourhood. I am sure if you saw the swarming population, locked out from such a garden of the future, and thought what it would be to them if opened next July or August, you would help us to render it available by that time if possible. The process is somewhat costly; the paths must be strong and wide, the drainage must be good; such a space is often very useful in affording light and air to a whole row of cottages if the high brick wall surrounding it is replaced by an iron railing; then there are grass guards to be provided, beds for flowers to be made, grass to be sown, perhaps trees and shrubs to be planted, and a great number of strong seats to be placed. After these are once paid for, the vestry undertakes the whole cost of maintenance and caretaking.

To those, however, who wish to make a gift to a neighbourhood which will be valued by thousands, these gardens form an excellent opportunity for doing so. It came out in evidence before the House of Lords Committee, at the time the Kyrle Society helped to save the St. James's burial ground from being absorbed by the London and North-Western Railway, that as many as 10,000 persons often visited another ground in the parish on a fine summer Sunday afternoon. If, then, you wish to give what will be enjoyed by many, you may enrich these gardens. One lady has just given us a fountain. As an example what has been found in other places to enhance the pleasure such gardens afford, I may enumerate aviaries full of bright

birds, or gold-fish for the fountains; summer houses for the old or feeble to sit in; invalid chairs to be borrowed to bring the delicate woman or child to the garden; periodicals to be lent by the gatekeeper; filters and mugs for drinking water. All are appropriate and valued gifts. One friend from Southampton, and one from Reading, sent a large contribution of suitable shrubs; one lady gave money to buy red and white hawthorn-trees, laburnums, almonds, and lilacs; and we have also had welcome presents of bulbs and of ferns.

Besides this living colour, we are trying to introduce inscriptions in permanent mosaic on the blank walls which often bound the gardens. In my printed letter to my fellow-workers this year, I referred to one such scheme in the following words:

I had hoped to have received contributions to pay for placing an inscription in a Lambeth garden. The design was most kindly drawn and given to the Kyrle Society by Mr. Statham. The words were George Herbert's:

All may have,

If they dare try, a glorious life or grave.'

I liked to think of the words being there; they were to run the whole length of the blank outside wall of the church which bounds the garden. I believed the words might go home to many a man as he hurried along the crowded thoroughfare near, if he caught sight of them between the trees, their colour attracting his notice perhaps, first, in its contrast with the dreary dinginess all round.

May I here express, as I have no other way of thanking the kind donor, my great delight, on returning home a few days after that letter was circulated, to find on my table 30l. in notes, accompanied by a few words from an anonymous friend to say that the gift was for this inscription? This donation so nearly completed the amount required that the mosaic is now being executed.

The need of these small gardens is now so generally recognised, and so much has lately been written about it, that I will not dwell on it here, except to point out the near connection of the subject with one just now attracting special attention, namely, the overcrowding of the homes of the poor. We all know that if people go into the country in summer with a large family, they say often, 'It will not matter having so small a house; the garden is so large.' What the private garden is to the one family, that the common garden is to the many families. These little London spaces become to the people summer nurseries, play-rooms, sitting-rooms, and dining-rooms. Think how, when the hot sun renders all the little houses in the London court oppressively stifling, the air blows cooler by the seats under the' plane-trees; fancy how much fresher the rooms are for the children to return to if they have been skipping out of doors in the twilight up to bed-time. I saw a woman with her work-basket comfortably settled in a summer-house in a garden at Stepney the other day making a shirt: she told me she always brought her work there in sum

mer. I have seen dozens of men take their dinners into these gardens in hot weather instead of going to the public-houses. All this makes the at best too narrow homes more healthy, more comfortable, more quiet.

May I in this connection mention a gift which one landowner is about to make? He notices that at Kensington and Paddington, where it is no longer possible to give separate gardens even to the rich, a strip of common garden is sometimes allotted to a row of houses or a square; for this advantage presumably much higher rent is paid by the householders. His poor tenants cannot pay for separate gardens, nor even for a space in common, but he has resolved to set apart freely, and devote in perpetuity for a public garden, at least two acres of land on the estate which he owns. So far as I know, this will be the first land which could have been sold for building which has been given, in perpetuity, for garden or recreation ground to Londoners by anyone. Let the name of Mr. Evelyn be remembered as the man who has led the way in this particular form of public benefit.

There are two legislative measures bearing on this subject which I believe to be greatly needed, and which I earnestly trust may be secured this year. One is the passing of the Disused Burial Grounds Bill, now before the House of Commons, which was introduced by Mr. John Holland. It is intended to preserve from the encroachments of builders all burial grounds, consecrated or unconsecrated. The want of such an Act has been felt for some time, and has been specially illustrated lately by the difficulty of preventing the Peel Grove Burial Ground from being used as a site for workmen's dwellings. The builder there and in other places proposes to put a layer of concrete over the graves, and to build on that. He avoids disturbing the bodies, and hopes thus to conform to the letter of the law. To say nothing of the importance of preserving these grounds as breathing spaces, the danger to health would be great if such houses were erected: hollowed by graves as the earth is, the concrete is sure to settle, cracks in it will be made, and the gases will rise into the warmed houses. Yet it seems doubtful whether anyone has power to interfere; the Home Secretary, I believe, cannot, as no bodies are moved. The houses can indeed be closed as insanitary after they are built, but it remains to be seen whether a vestry will ruin a poor man,' as it will be called, if they condemn the houses when once the builder has expended money on building. It is to be earnestly hoped that in the hurry of an exciting session nothing will happen to interfere with the passing of the Bill.

The other legislative reform which seems to me needed is one in the Metropolitan Building Acts, or by-laws of the Metropolitan Board which regulate the amount of space to be left behind all new dwelling houses. The amount should not be a fixed one, as at