Apart from the Church what machinery is at work? First, because there are so many Catholics in the place, one must think of them. It is, however, difficult to ascertain the Catholic agencies at work among these people. The people are told that they must go to mass; Roman Catholic sisters give dinners to children; there is the Roman League of the Cross—a temperance association; I think that the Catholics are in great measure left to the charities of the Anglicans, so long as these do not try to convert the Romans.

The Salvation Army people attempt nothing—absolutely nothing in this parish. There are at present neither Baptist, nor Wesleyan, nor Independent chapels in the place. A few years ago, on the appearance of the book called the 'Bitter Cry of Outcast London,' an attempt was made by the last-named body; they found an old chapel belonging to the Congregationalists, with an endowment of L80 a year, which they turned into a mission-hall, and carried on with spirit for two years mission work in the place; they soon obtained large funds, which they seem to have lavished with more zeal than discretion. Presently their money was all gone and they could get no more; then the chapel was turned into a night-shelter. Next It was burned to the ground. It is now rebuilt and is again a night-shelter. There is, however, an historic monument in the parish with which remains a survival of former activity. It is a Quaker meeting-house which dates back to 1667. It stands within its walls, quiet and decorous; there are the chapel, the ante-room, and the burial-ground. The congregation still meet, reduced to fifty; they still hold their Sunday-school; and not far off one of the fraternity carries on a Creche which takes care of seventy or eighty babies, and is blessed every day by as many mothers.

Considering all these agencies—how they are at work day after day, never resting, never ceasing, never relaxing their hold, always compelling the people more and more within the circle of their influence; how they incline the hearts of the children to better things and show them how to win these better things—one wonders that the whole parish is not already clad in white robes and sitting with harp and crown. On the other hand, walking down London Street, Ratcliff, looking at the foul houses, hearing the foul language, seeing the poor women with black eyes, watching the multitudinous children in the mud, one wonders whether even these agencies are enough to stem the tide and to prevent this mass of people from falling lower and lower still into the hell of savagery. This parish is one of the poorest in London; it is one of the least known; it is one of the least visited. Explorers of slums seldom come here; it is not fashionably miserable. Yet all these fine things are done here, and as in this parish so in every other. It is continually stated as a mere commonplace—one may see the thing advanced everywhere, in 'thoughtful' papers, in leading articles—that the Church of Rome alone can produce its self-sacrificing martyrs, its lives of pure devotion. Then what of these parish-workers of the Church of England? What of that young physician who worked himself to death for the children? What of the young men—not one here and there but in dozens—who give up all that young men mostly love for the sake of laborious nights among rough and rude lads? What of the gentlewomen who pass long years—give up their youth, their beauty, and their strength—among girls and women whose language is at first like a blow to them? What of the clergy themselves, always, all day long, living in the midst of the very poor—hardly paid, always giving out of their poverty, forgotten in their obscurity, far from any chance of promotion, too hard-worked to read or study, dropped out of all the old scholarly circles? Nay, my brothers, we cannot allow to the Church of Rome all the unselfish men and women. Father Damien is one of us as well. I have met him—I know him by sight—he lives and has long lived, in Riverside London.



ST. KATHERINE'S BY THE TOWER



On the 30th day of October, in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five, there was gathered together a congregation to assist at the mournfullest service ever heard in any church. The place was the Precinct of St. Katherine's, the church was that known as St. Katherine's by the Tower—the most ancient and venerable church in the whole of East London—a city which now has but two ancient churches left, those of Bow and of Stepney, without counting the old tower of Hackney.

Suppose it was advertised that the last and the farewell service, before the demolition of the Abbey, would be held at Westminster on a certain day; that after the service the old church would be pulled down; that some of the monuments would be removed, the rest destroyed; that the bones of the illustrious dead would be carted away and scattered, and that the site would be occupied by warehouses used for commercial purposes. One can picture the frantic rage and despair with which the news would everywhere be received; one can imagine the stirring of the hearts of all those who to every part of the world inherit the Anglo-Saxon speech, one can hear the sobbing and the wailing which accompany the last anthem, the last sermon, the last prayer.

St. Katherine's by the Tower was the Abbey of East London, poor and small, certainly, compared with the Cathedral church of the City and the Abbey of the West; but stately and ancient; endowed by half a dozen Sovereigns; consecrated by the memory of seven hundred years, filled with the monuments of great men and small men buried within her walls; standing in her own Precinct; with her own Courts, Spiritual and Temporal; with her own judges and officers; surrounded by the claustral buildings belonging to Master, Brethren, Sisters, and Bedeswomen. The church and the hospital had long survived the intentions of the founders; yet as they stood, so situated, so ancient, so venerable, amid a dense population of rough sailors and sailor folk, with such enormous possibilities for good and useful work, sacred and secular, one is lost in wonder that the consent of Parliament, even for purposes of gain, could be obtained for their destruction. Yet St. Katherine's was destroyed. When the voice of the preacher died away, the destroyers began their work. They pulled down the church; they hacked up the monuments, and dug up the bones; they destroyed the Master's house, and cut down the trees in his quiet orchard; they pulled down the Brothers' houses round the little ancient square; they pulled down the row of Sisters' houses and the Bedeswomen's houses; they swept the people out of the Precinct, and destroyed the streets; they pulled down the Courts, Spiritual and Temporal, and opened the doors of the prison; they grubbed up the burying ground, and with the bones and the dust of the dead, and the rubbish of the foundations, they filled up the old reservoir of the Chelsea water-works, and enabled Mr.

Cubitt to build Eccleston Square. When all was gone they let the water into the big hole they had made, and called it St. Katherine's Dock. All this done, they became aware of certain prickings of conscience. They had utterly demolished and swept away and destroyed a thing which could never be replaced; they were fain to do something to appease those prickings. They therefore stuck up a new chapel, which the architect called Gothic, with six neat houses in two rows, and a large house with a garden in Regent's Park, and this they called St. Katherine's, 'Sirs,' they said, 'it is not true that we have destroyed that ancient foundation at all; we have only removed it to another place. Behold your St. Katherine's!' Of course it is nothing of the kind. It is not St. Katherine's. It is a sham, a house of Shams and Shadows.

Thus was St. Katherine's destroyed; not for the needs of the City, because it is not clear that the new docks were wanted, or that there was no other place for them, but in sheer inability to understand what the place meant as to the past, and what it might be made to do in the future. The story of the Hospital has been often told: partly, as by Ducarel and by Lysons, for the historical interest; partly, as by Mr. Simcox Lea, in protest against the present we of its revenues. It is with the latter object, though I disagree altogether with Mr. Lea's conclusions, that I ask leave to tell the story once more. The story will have to be told, perhaps, again and again, until people can be made to understand the uselessness and the waste and the foolishness of the present establishment in the Park, which has assumed and bears the style and title of St. Katherine's Hospital by the Tower.

The beginning of the Hospital dates seven hundred and forty years back, when Matilda, Stephen's Queen, founded it for the purpose of having masses said for the repose of her two children, Baldwin and Matilda, She ordered that the Hospital should consist of a Master, Brothers, Sisters, and certain poor persons—probably the same as in the later foundation. She appointed the Prior and Canons of Holy Trinity to have perpetual custody of the Hospital; and she reserved to herself and all succeeding Queens of England the nomination, of the Master. Her grant was approved by the King, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Pope. Shortly afterwards William of Ypres bestowed the land of Edredeshede, afterwards called Queenhythe, on the Priory of Holy Trinity, subject to an annual payment of L20 to the Hospital of Katherine's by the Tower.

This was the original foundation. It was not a Charity; it was a Religious House with a definite duty—to pray for the souls of two children; it had no other charitable objects than belong to any religious foundation—viz., the giving of alms to the poor, nor was it intended as a church for the people; in those days there were no people outside the Tower, save the inhabitants of a few scattered cottages along the river Wall, and the farmhouses of Steban Heath. It was simply founded for the benefit of two little princes' souls. One refrains from asking what was done for the little paupers' souls in those days.

The Prior and Canons of Holy Trinity without Aldgate continued to exercise some authority over the Hospital, but apparently—the subject only interests the ecclesiastical historian—against the protests and grumblings of the St. Katherine's Society. It was, however, formally handed over to them, a hundred and forty years later, by Henry the Third. After his death, Queen Eleanor, for some reason, now dimly intelligible, wanted to get the Hospital into her own hands. The Bishop of London took it away from the Priory and transferred it to her. Then, perhaps with the view of preventing any subsequent claim by the Priory, she declared the Hospital dissolved.

Here ends the first chapter in the history of the Hospital. The foundation for the souls of the two princes existed no longer—the children, no doubt, having been long since sung out of Purgatory. Queen Eleanor, however, immediately refounded it. The Hospital was, as before, to consist of a Master, three Brothers, three Sisters, and bedeswomen. It was also provided that six poor scholars were to be fed and clothed—not educated, The Queen further provided that on November the 16th of every year twelve pence each should be given to the poor scholars, and the same amount to twenty-four poor persons; and that on November the 20th, the anniversary of the King's death, one thousand poor men should receive one halfpenny each. Here is the first introduction of a charity. The Hospital is no longer an ecclesiastical foundation only; it maintains scholars and gives substantial alms. Who received these alms? Of course the people in the neighbourhood—if there were no inhabitants in the Precinct, the poor of Portsoken Ward. In either case the charity would be local—a point of the greatest importance. Queen Eleanor also continued her predecessor's rule that the patronage of the Hospital should remain in the hands of the Queens of England for ever; when there was no Queen, then in the hands of the Queen Dowager; failing in her, in those of the King. This rule still obtains. The Queen appoints the Master, Brothers, and Sisters of the House of Shams in Regent's Park, just as her predecessors appointed those of St. Katherine's by the Tower.

Queen Eleanor was followed by other royal benefactors. Edward the Second, for example, gave the Hospital the rectory of St. Peter's in Northampton. Queen Philippa, who, like Eleanor, regarded the place with especial affection, endowed it with the manor of Upchurch in Kent, and that of Queenbury in Hertfordshire. She also founded a chantry with L10 a year for a chaplain. Edward the Third founded another chantry in honour of Philippa, with a charge of L10 a year upon the Hanaper Office; he also conferred upon it the right of cutting wood for fuel in the Forest of Essex. Richard the Second gave it the manor of Reshyndene in Sheppy, and 120 acres of land in Minster. Henry the Sixth gave it the manors of Chesingbury in Wiltshire, and Quasley in Hants; he also granted a charter, with the privilege of holding a fair. Lastly, Henry the Eighth founded, in connection with St. Katherine's by the Tower, the Guild of St. Barbara, consisting of a Master, three Wardens, and a great number of members, among whom were Cardinal Wolsey, the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury, and the Earl and Countess of Northumberland, with other great and illustrious persons.

This is a goodly list of benefactors. It is evident that St. Katherine's was a foundation regarded by the Kings and Queens of England with great favour. Other benefactors it had, notably John Holland, Duke of Exeter, Lord High Admiral and Constable of the Tower, himself of royal descent. He was buried in the church, with his two wives, and bequeathed to the Hospital the manor of Much Gaddesden. He also gave it a cup of beryl, garnished with gold, pearls, and precious stones, and a chalice of gold for the celebration of the Holy Sacrament.

In the year 1546 all the lands belonging to the Hospital were transferred to the Crown.

At this time the whole revenue of the Hospital was L364 12s. 6d., and the expenditure was L210 6s. 5d.; the difference being the value of the mastership. The Master at the dissolution was Gilbert Lathom, a priest, and the brothers were five in number—namely, the original three, and the two priests for the chantries. Four of the five had 'for his stipend, mete, and drynke, by yere,' the sum of L8, which is fivepence farthing a day; the other had L9, which is sixpence a day. It would be interesting, by comparison of prices, to ascertain how much could be purchased with sixpence a day. The three Sisters had also L8 year, and the Bedeswomen had each two pounds five shillings and sixpence a year. There were six scholars at L4 a year each for 'their mete, drynke, clothes, and other necessaries'; and there were four servants, a steward, a butler, a cook, and an under-cook, who cost L5 a year each. There were two gardens and a yard or court—namely, the square, bounded by the houses of the Brothers, and the church.

This marks the closing of the second chapter in the history of the Hospital. With the cessation of saying masses for the dead its religious character expired. There remained only the services in the church for the inhabitants of the Precinct in the time of Henry VIII.

The only use of the Hospital was now as a charity. Fortunately, the place was not, like the Priory of the Holy Trinity, granted to a courtier, otherwise it would have been swept away just as that Priory, or that of Elsing's Spital, was swept away. It continued after a while to carry on its existence, but with changes. It was secularized. The Masters for a hundred and fifty years, not counting the interval of Queen Mary's reign, were laymen. The Brothers were generally laymen. The first Master of the third period was Sir Thomas Seymour; he was succeeded by Sir Francis Flemyng, Lieutenant General of the King's Ordnance. Flemyng was deprived by Queen Mary, who appointed one Francis Mallet, a priest, in his place. Queen Elizabeth dispossessed Malet, and appointed Thomas Wilson, a layman and a Doctor at Laws. During his mastership there were no Brothers, and only a few Sisters or Bedeswomen. The Hospital then became a rich sinecure. Among the Masters were Sir Julius Caesar, Master of the Rolls; Sir Robert Acton; Dr. Coxe; three Montague brothers, Walter, Henry, and George; Lord Brownker; the Earl of Feversham; Sir Henry Newton, Judge of the High Court of Admiralty; the Hon. George Berkeley; and Sir James Butler. The Brothers had been re-established—their names are enumerated by Ducarel—one or two of them were clerks in orders, but all the rest were laymen. They still received the old stipend of L8 a year, with a small house. As for the rest of the greatly increased income it went to the Master after the manner common to all the old charities. During the latter half of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth century St. Katherine's by the Tower consisted of a beautiful old church standing with its buildings clustered round it—a Master's house, rich in carved and ancient wood-work, with its gardens and orchards; its houses for the Brothers, Sisters, and Bedeswomen, each of whom continued to receive the same salary as that ordained by Queen Eleanor. Service was held in the church for the inhabitants of the Precinct, but the Hospital was wholly secular. The Master devoured by far the greater part of the revenue, and the alms-people—Brothers, Sisters, and Bedeswomen—had no duties to perform of any kind.

In the year 1698 this, the third chapter in the life of the Hospital, was closed. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Somers, held in that year a Visitation of the Hospital, the result of which is interesting, because it shows, first, a lingering of the old ecclesiastical traditions, and, next, the sense that something useful ought to be done with the income of the Hospital. It was therefore ordered in the new regulations provided by the Chancellor that the Brothers should be in Holy Orders, and that a school of thirty-five boys and fifteen girls should be maintained by the Hospital. It does not appear that any duties were expected of the Brothers. Like the Fellows of colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, they were all to be in priests' orders, and for exactly the same reason, because at the original foundations of the colleges, as well as of the Hospital, the Fellows were all priests. As for the Master, he remained a layman. This new order of things, therefore, raised the position of the Brothers, and gave a new dignity to the Hospital; further, the School as well as the Bedeswomen defined its position as a charity. It still fell far, very far, short of what it might have done, but it was not between the years 1698 and 1825 quite so useless as it had been. A plan of the Precinct, with drawings of the church, within and without, and of the monuments in the church, may be found in Lysons. The obscurity of the Hospital, and the neglect into which it fell during the last century, are shown by the small attention paid to it in the books on London of the last century, and the early years of the present century. Thus, in Harrison's 'History of London,' though nearly every church in the City and its immediate suburbs is figured, St. Katherine's is not drawn. In Strype (edition 1720) there is no drawing of St. Katherine's; in Dodsley's 'London,' 1761, it is described but not figured; and Wilkinson, in his 'Londina Illustrata,' passes it over entirely. The Hospital buildings consisted of a square, of which the north side was occupied by the Master's house, with a large garden behind, and the Master's orchard between his garden and the river; on the east and west sides were the Brothers' houses; and on the south side of the square was the church and the chapter-house. On the east of the church was the burying-ground. South of the church was the Sisters' close, with the houses occupied by the Sisters and the Bedeswomen. The old Brothers' houses were taken down and rebuilt about the year 1755, and the Master's house, an ancient building, full of carved timber-work, had also been taken down, so that in the year 1825, when the Hospital was finally destroyed, the only venerable building standing in the Precinct was the church itself. To look at the drawings of this old church and to think of the loving care with which it would have been treated had it been allowed to stand till this day, and then to consider the 'Gothic' edifice in Regent's Park, is indeed saddening. The church consisted of the nave and chancel with two aisles, built by Bishop Beckington, formerly the Master. The east window, 30 feet high and 25 feet wide, had once been most beautiful when its windows were stained. The tracery was still fine; a St. Katherine's wheel occupied the highest part, and beneath it was a rose; but none of the windows had preserved their painted glass, so that the general effect of the interior must have been cold. The carved wood of the stalls and the great pulpit, presented by Sir Julius Caesar, may still be seen in the Regent's Park Chapel, where are also some of the monuments. Of these the church was full. The finest (now in Regent's Park) was that of John Holland, Duke of Exeter, and his two wives. There was one of the Hon. George Montague, Master of the Hospital, who died in the year 1681; and there was the monument with kneeling figures of one Cutting and his wife, with his coat of arms. The seats of the stalls are curiously carved, as is so often found, with grotesque figures—human birds, monkeys, lions, boys riding hogs, angels playing bagpipes, beasts with human heads, pelicans feeding their young, and the devil with hoof and horns carrying off a brace of souls. There was more than the customary wealth epitaphs. Thus, on the tablet to the memory of the daughter of one of the Brothers was written:

'Thus we by want, more than by having, learn The worth of things in which we claim concern.'

On that of William Cutting, a benefactor to Gonville and Caius, Cambridge, is written:

'Not dead, if good deedes could keep men alive, Nor all dead since good deedes do men revive. Gunville and Kaies his good deedes maie record, And will (no doubt) him praise therefor afford.'

On the tablet of Charles Stamford, clergyman:

'Mille modis morimur mortaies, nascimur uno: Sunt hominum morbi milie sed una salus.'

And to the memory of Robert Beadles, free-mason, one of His Majesty's gunners of the Tower, who died in the year 1683:

'He now rests quiet, in his grave secure; Where still the noise of guns he can endure; His martial soul is doubtless now at rest, Who in his lifetime was so oft oppressed With care and fears, and strange cross acts of late, But now is happy and in glorious state. The blustering storm of life with him is o'er, And he is landed on that happy shore Where 'tis that he can hope and fear no more.'

There they lay buried, the good people of St. Katherine's Precinct. They were of all trades, but chiefly belonged to those who go down to the sea in ships. On the list of names are those of half a dozen captains, one of them captain of H.M.S. Monmouth, who died in the year 1706, aged 31 years; there are the names of Lieutenants; there are those of sailmakers and gunners; there is a sergeant of Admiralty, a moneyer of the Tower, a weaver, a citizen and stationer, a Dutchman who fell overboard and was drowned, a surveyor and collector—all the trades and callings that would gather together in this little riverside district separated and cut off from the rest of London. Among the people who lived here were the descendants of them who came away with the English on the taking of Calais, Guisnes, and Hames. They settled in a street called Hames and Guisnes Lane, corrupted into Hangman's Gains. A census taken in the reign of Queen Elizabeth showed that of those resident in the Precinct, 328 were Dutch, 8 were Danes, 5 were Polanders, 69 Were French—all hat-makers—2 Spanish, 1 Italian, and 12 Scotch. Verstegan, the antiquary, was born here, and here lived Raymond Lully. During the last century the Precinct cane to be inhabited almost entirely by sailors, belonging to every nation and every religion under the sun.

This was the place which it was permitted to certain promoters of a Dock Company to destroy utterly. A place with a history of seven hundred years, which might, had its ecclesiastical character been preserved and developed, have been converted into a cathedral for East London; or, if its secular character had been maintained, might have become a noble centre of all kinds of useful work for the great chaotic city of East London. They suffered it to be destroyed. It has been destroyed for sixty years. As for calling the place in Regent's Park St. Katherine's Hospital, that, I repeat, is absurd. There is no longer a St. Katherine's Hospital. As well call the garish new building on the embankment Sion College. That is not, indeed, Sion College. The London Clergy, who, of all people, might have been expected to guard the monuments of the past, have sold Sion College for what it would fetch. The site of the Cripplegate nunnery; of Elsing's Spital for blind men; of Sion College, or Clergy House, has been destroyed by its own trustees. The sweet old place, the peacefullest spot in the whole city, with its long low library, its Bedesmen's rooms, and its quiet reading room, is gone. You might just as well destroy Trinity College, Cambridge, and then stick up a modern wing to Somerset House, and call that Trinity. In the same way St. Katherine's by the Tower was destroyed sixty years ago.

Let me repeat that the Hospital suffered four changes.

First, it was founded by Queen Matilda, for the repose of her children's souls. Next, it was dissolved and again founded, and subsequently endowed as a Religious House with chantries, certain definite duties of masses for the dead, certain charitable trusts, and other functions. Thirdly, when the Mass ceased to be said it was secularized completely. Service was held in the church, but the Hospital became a perfectly secular charity, supporting a few almspeople with niggard hand, and a Master in great splendour. Fourthly, it was again treated as a semi-ecclesiastical foundation, for reasons which do not appear. At the same time, while its charities were enlarged, no duties were assigned to the Brothers, who seem to have been considered as Fellows, forming the Society, and, therefore, like the Fellows at Oxford and Cambridge, obliged to be in Holy Orders. Lastly, as we have seen, it was destroyed.

After the Hospital had been destroyed, a scheme for the management of the revenues was suggested to Lord Elden, then Lord Chancellor, and afterwards approved by Lord Lyndhurst. The question before the Chancellor was, one would think, the following: 'Here is an annual revenue of L5,000 and more, released by the destruction of the Hospital. How can it be best applied for the general good or for the benefit of the crowded city around the site of the old Hospital?' That, however, was not the view of the Lord Chancellor. He said, practically:

'Here is a large property which has hitherto been devoted to the use of maintaining in idleness, and not as a reward or pension for good work done, a Master, three Brothers, three Sisters, and ten poor women. The ecclesiastical purposes for which the property was originally got together have long since utterly vanished. The church in which service used to be held is abolished, and the place where it stood is turned into a dock. We will build a new church where none is wanted, we will perpetuate the waste of all this money; the stipends of the Brothers and Sisters shall be raised; to the Brothers shall be assigned, nominally, the service in the chapel, but they shall have a chaplain or reader, to prevent this duty from becoming onerous; the Sisters shall have nothing at all to do; the Bedeswomen shall be deprived of their houses and shall receive no advance in their pay, but they shall be doubled in number. Twenty Bedesmen shall also be added with the same pay, viz., L10 a year, or 4s. a week.[NOTE: Note that in 1545 each Bedeswomen received 10d, a week, and each Sister 3s., so that the proportion of Bedeswoman's pay to Sister's pay was then as 1:3'6. But Lord Lyndhurst takes away the houses from the poor women and gives them no more pay, so that, without counting the loss of their houses, the Bedeswoman's pay under Victoria is to the Sister's pay as 1:19. The Victorian Bedeswoman was therefore relatively reduced in proportion to the Sister six-fold compared with her Tudor predecessor.] The Master shall have a beautiful house with a garden, conservancy, stabling for seven horses, and L1,200 a year, besides comfortable perquisites. He shall have no duties except the presidency of the chapter. And in order that the thing may not seem perfectly and profoundly ridiculous there shall be a school of twenty-four boys and twelve girls.'

This was the solution proposed and adopted by two eminent Chancellors, and carried into effect for thirty years. During the years 1858-1863 the average revenue was L7,460 8s. 2-3/4d. Of this sum the Master, Brethren, and Sisters absorbed with their buildings L4,102 8s. 2-3/4d.; the management expenses Were L909 5s. 6d.; the chapel cost L211 17s. 11d., sundries amounted to L141 6s. 10-3/4 d.; and the useful portion of the expenditure was represented by the sum of L554 9s. 7-1/2 d. Absolute uselessness—for the chapel was by no means wanted—is represented by L6,904, and usefulness by L554—a proportion of very nearly 12-1/2:1.

Yet another opportunity occurred of dealing rationally with this large property.

In the year 1871 a Royal Commission was appointed to examine 'into several matters relative to the Royal Hospital of St. Katherine near the Tower.' The question might again have been raised how best to apply the large revenues for the general good. The Commissioners had before them quite clearly the way in which the seven thousand and odd pounds a year was being spent; they could arrive as easily as ourselves at the proportion above set forth, viz.:

Waste : usefulness :: 12-1/2 : 1.

They threw away this opportunity; they could not tear away the ecclesiastical rags with which the new foundation of 1827—the mock St. Katherine's—has been wrapped in imitation of the old. In an age when the universities have been secularized, when the Fellows of colleges are no longer required to be in Orders, when every useless old charity is being reformed, and every endowment reconsidered with a view to making it useful to the living as, under former conditions, it was to the dead, they actually proposed to increase the uselessness and the waste by adding a fourth Brother (which has not been done), and raising the stipends of Brothers and Sisters. They also recommended the establishment of an upper school, with 'foundation boarders.' Considering that the upper and middle classes have already appropriated to their own use almost every educational endowment in the country, this proposition seems too ridiculous. The whole Report is indeed a marvellous illustration of the tenacity of old prejudices. Yet it did one good thing; it recommended that the accounts of the Hospital should be submitted every year to the Charity Commissioners, thus distinctly recognising the fact that the new foundation is not an ecclesiastical institution, but a charity.

The Report mentions several propositions which had been laid before the Commissioners during their inquiry for the application of the revenues. The Committee of the Adult Orphan Institution thought that they should like to administer the funds; the Rector of St. George's-in-the-East thought that he should very much like to use them for the purpose of converting that parish into 'a collegiate church, under a dean and canons, who, with a sisterhood, might devote themselves to the spiritual benefit, etc.'; others suggested that a missionary collegiate church should be established 'as a centre of missionary work for the East of London, with model schools, refuges, reformatories, etc., conducted by the clergy.' Others, again, pleaded for the use of the money in aid of the crowded parishes near the Precinct.

The Commissioners were of a different opinion. The Hospital, they said, never had a local character. This is the most startling statement that ever issued from the mouth of a Lord Chancellor. Not a local character? Then for whom were the services of the church held? Where were the Bedeswomen found? Where the poor scholars? Where did the church stand? Who got the doles? Not a local character? We might as well contend, for example, that Rochester Cathedral and Close and School have no local character; that Portsmouth Dockyard has no local character; that Westminster School has no local character. St. Katherine's Hospital belonged to its Precinct, where it had stood for some hundred years. As well pretend that the Tower itself has no local character. The 'local character' of St. Katherine's grew year by year: the founder thought only to make a bridge for her children from purgatory to heaven by the harmonious voices of the Master, the Brothers, and the Sisters; but purpose widens. Presently purgatory disappears, and the whole ecclesiastical part of the foundation, except service in the church, vanishes with it. There remain, however, the revenues, and these belong, if any revenues could, to the locality.

In the year 1863 the proportion of waste to profit was as 12-1/2:1. Has this proportion in the quarter of a century which has elapsed increased or has it decreased?

From time to time, as we have seen, the question forces itself upon men's minds—whether this revenue could not be administered to better advantage. Lord Somers encounters the difficulty in the year 1698; Lord Lyndhurst in 1829; Lord Hatherley in 1871. I suppose that even a Lord Chancellor does not claim infallible wisdom. Therefore I venture to insist upon the facts that the Reformation destroyed the Religious House of St. Katherine; that the changes made by Lord Somers only made the old Hospital useless; and that the Royal Commission of the year 1871 confirmed, in the new foundation, the later uselessness of the old. The House of Shams and Shadows in Regent's Park is not the old St. Katherine's at all; that is dead and done with; it is a fungus which sprang up yesterday, which is not wholesome for human food, and uses up, for no good purpose, the soil in which it grows.

Yet, because one would not be charged with unfairness, what does the Rev. Simcox Lea, in his history of St. Katherine's Hospital (Longmans, 1878), say?

'St. Katherine's Hospital is an Ecclesiastical Corporation, returned as a "Promotion Spiritual" in the reign of Henry VIII., and so acknowledged by law in the reign of Charles I. It takes its place as a Collegiate Church with Westminster and Windsor. The Clerical Head of its Chapter, the Master of the Hospital, will be entitled, unless Her Majesty shall see fit otherwise to direct, to the style of Very Reverend and the rank of Dean. The Brothers have the status and dignity of Canons Residentiary, and through the Sisters of the Chapter the parallel dignity of Canonesses is preserved, under another style, to the English Church of our day. The Collegiate Chapter holds its entire revenues subject to certain eleemosynary trusts embodied in its original constitution, the ecclesiastical and the charitable charges belonging alike to all the estates instead of being assigned separately to different portions of them.... All these principles of the constitution of St. Katherine's must be kept in view in any scheme which it may be proposed to submit, or in any suggestions which may be offered through the press, for the consideration of the Lord Chancellor in reference to the advice which he may submit to the Queen.... St. Katherine's Hospital is no more a "Charity" than Westminster Abbey is a Charity, and to describe it as such, after the true facts of the case are known, will leave any writer or speaker open to the charge of discourtesy, directly offered to a capitular body whose personal constitution is worthy of its high and ancient corporate ecclesiastical dignity, and indirectly through the members of the Chapter, to the Queen.'

It will thus be seen that those of us who think that the place is a Charity, and therefore call it one—including Lord Eldon and Lord Lyndhurst, the Report of the Charity Commissioners in 1866, and Lord Hatherley in 1871—are open to the charge of discourtesy. Well, let us remain open to that charge; it does not kill. If it is not a Charity, what is it? A place for getting the souls of rich men out of purgatory? But the souls of rich men no longer in this country have the privilege of being bought out of purgatory. Then what is it? A place where seven well-born ladies and gentlemen are provided with excellent houses and comfortable incomes—for doing what? Nothing.

Let us, if we must, offer a compromise. Let the Master, Brothers, and Sisters, now forming the Society of New St. Katherine's, remain in Regent's Park. We will not disturb them. Let them enjoy their salaries so long as they live. At their deaths let those who love shams and pretences appoint other Brothers and Sisters who will have all the dignity of the position without the houses or the salaries. We may even go so far as to provide a chaplain for the service of the chapel, if the good people of the Terraces would like those services to continue. But as for the rest of the income one cannot choose but ask—and, if the request be not granted, ask again, and again—that it be restored to that part of London to which it belongs. One would not, with the person who communicated with the Commissioners, insult East London by founding a 'Missionary' College in its midst unless it be allowed to have branches in Belgravia, Lincoln's Inn, the Temple, St. John's Wood, South Kensington, and other parts of West London; we will certainly not ask permission to turn St. George's-in-the-East into a Collegiate Church with a Dean and Canons, 'and a sisterhood.' But one must ask that the pretence and show of keeping up this ugly and useless modern place as the ancient and venerable Hospital be abandoned as soon as possible. That old Hospital is dead and destroyed; its ecclesiastical existence had been dead long before, its lands and houses and funds remain to be used for the benefit of the living.

Ten thousand pounds a year! This is a goodly estate. Think what ten thousand pounds a year might do, well administered! Think of the terrible and criminal waste in suffering all that money, which belongs to East London, to be given away—year after year—in profitless alms to ladies and gentlemen in return for no services rendered or even pretended. Ten thousand pounds a year would run a magnificent school of industrial education; it would teach thousands of lads and girls how to use their heads and hands; it would be a perennial living stream, changing the thirsty desert into flowery meads and fruitful vineyards; it would save thousands of boys from the dreadful doom—a thing of these latter days—of being able to learn no trade; it would dignify thousands, and tens of thousands, of lives with the knowledge and mastery of a craft; it would save from degradation and from slavery thousands of women; it would restrain thousands of men from the beery slums of drink and crime. Above all—perhaps this is the main consideration—the judicious employment of ten thousand pounds a year would be presently worth many millions a year to London from the skilled labour it would cultivate and the many arts it would develop and foster.

It is a cruel thing—a most cruel thing—to destroy wantonly anything that is venerable with age and associated with the memories of the past. It was a horrible thing to destroy that old Hospital. But it is gone. The house of Shams and Shadows in Regent's Park has got nothing whatever to do with it. Its revenues did not make the old Hospital; that was made up by its ancient church; by the old buildings clustered round the church; by the old customs of the Precinct, with its Courts, temporal and spiritual, its offices and its prison; by its burial-grounds, with its Bedesmen and Bedeswomen, and by the rough sailor population which dwelt in its narrow lanes and courts. How could that place be allowed to suffer destruction? But when the old thing is gone we must cast about for the best uses of anything which once belonged to it. And of all the uses to which the revenues of the old Hospital might be put, the present seems the most unfit and the least worthy.

Again, if Queen Matilda in these days wished to do a good work, what would she found? There are many purposes for which benevolent persons bequeath and grant money. They are not the old purposes. They all mean, nowadays, the advancement and bettering of the people. A great lady spends thousands in founding a market; a man with much money presents a free library to his native town; collections are made for hospitals; everything is for the bettering of the people. We have not yet advanced to the stage of bettering he rich people; but that will come very shortly. In fact, the condition of the rich is already exciting the gravest apprehensions among their poorer brethren. We can trace, easily enough, the progress and growth of charity. It begins at home, with anxiety for one's own soul first, and the souls of one's children next. Charities give way to doles; doles are succeeded by almshouses; these again by charity schools. The present generation has begun to understand that the truest charity consists in throwing open the doors to honest effort, and in helping those who help themselves. Else what is the meaning of technical schools? What else mean the classes at the People's Palace, the Polytechnic, the Evening Recreation Schools, and the City of London Guilds Institute?

I believe that a conviction of the new truer charity, and of the futility of the old modes, is destined to sink deeper and deeper into men's hearts, until our working classes will perhaps fall into the extreme in unforgiving hardness towards those whom unthrift, profligacy, idleness, have brought to want. But with this conviction is growing up the absolute necessity of more technical schools and better industrial training. We want to make our handicraftsmen better than any foreigners. More than that, there are some who say that the very existence of the United Kingdom as a Power depends upon our doing this. Can we afford any longer to keep up, at a yearly loss of all the power represented by ten thousand pounds a year, that house of Shams and Shadows which we call by the name of the ancient and venerable Hospital of St. Katherine's by the Tower?



THE UPWARD PRESSURE:



A PROPHETIC CHAPTER FROM THE 'HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY'

The most striking part of the great Social Revolution which was witnessed by the earlier years of the twentieth century was the event which preceded that Revolution, made it possible, and moulded it; namely, the Conquest of the Professions by the people. Happily it was a Conquest achieved without exciting any active opposition; it advanced unnoticed, step by step, and it was unsuspected, as regards its real significance, until the end was inevitable and visible to all. It is my purpose in this Chapter, first to show what was the position of the mass of the nation before this event, as regards the Professions; and next to relate briefly the successive events which led to the Conquest, and so prepared the way for the abolition of all that was then left of the old aristocratic regime.

Speaking in general terms—the exceptions shall be noted afterward—the Professions during the whole of the nineteenth century were jealously barred and closed in and fenced round. Admission, in theory, could only be obtained by young men of gentle birth and good breeding. Not that there was any expressed rule to that effect. It was not written over the gateway of Lincoln's Inn that none but gentlemen were to be admitted, nor was it ever stated in any book or paper that none but gentlemen were to be called. But, as you will be shown immediately, the barring of the gate against the lad of humble origin was quite as effectually accomplished without any law, mule, or regulation whatever.

The professional avenues of distinction which, early in the twentieth century, were only three or four, had, by the end of the century, been multiplied tenfold by the birth or creation of new Professions. Formerly a young man of ambition might go into tho Church, into one of the two services, into the Law, or into Medicine. He might also, if he were a country gentleman, go into the House of Commons. At the end of the century the professional career included, besides these, all the various branches of Science, all the forms of Art, all the divisions of Literature, Music, Architecture, the Drama, Engineering, Teaching, Archaeology, Political Economy, and, in fact, every conceivable subject to which the mind of man can worthily devote itself.

In all these branches there were great—in some, very great—prizes to be obtained; prizes not always of money, but of honour: in some of them the prizes included what was considered the greatest of all rewards—a Peerage. The country, indeed, was already beginning to insist that the national distinctions should be bestowed upon all those—and only upon those—who rendered real services to the State. One poet had been made a Peer. One man of science had been made a Privy Councillor, and another a Peer; two painters had been made baronets; and the humble distinction of Knight Bachelor, which had been tossed contemptuously to city sheriffs, provincial mayors, and undistinguished persons who used back-stairs influence to get the title, was now brought into better consideration by being shared by a few musicians, engineers, physicians, and others. Nothing could more clearly show the real contempt in which literature and science were held in an aristocratic country than that, although there were a dozen degrees of peerage and half a dozen orders of knighthood, there was not one order reserved for men of science, literature, and art. Feeble protests from time to time were made against this absurdity, but in the end it proved useful, because the chief argument against the continuance of titles of honour in the great debate on the subject, in the year 1920, was the fact that all through the nineteenth century the men who most deserved the thanks and recognition of the State were (with the exception of soldiers and lawyers) absolutely neglected by the Court and the House of Lords.

Let us consider by what usages, rather than by what rules, the Professions were barred to the people. In the Church a young man could not be ordained under the age of twenty-three. Nor would the Bishop ordain him, as a rule, unless he was a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge. This meant that he was to stay at school, and that a good school, till the age of nineteen; that he was then to devote four years more to carrying on his studies in a very expensive manner; in other words, that he must be able to spend at least a thousand pounds before he could obtain Orders, and that he would then receive pay at a much lower rate than a good carpenter or engine-driver.

At the Bar it was the custom for a man to enter his name after leaving the University: he would then be called at five or six-and-twenty. A young man must be able to keep himself until that age, and even longer, because a lawyer's practice begins slowly. There were also very heavy dues on entrance and on being called. In plain terms, no young man could enter at the Bar who did not possess or command, at least, a thousand pounds.

In the lower branch of the law a young man might, it is true, be admitted at twenty-one. But he had to pay a heavy premium for his articles, and large fees both at entrance and on passing the examination which admitted him. Not much less, therefore, including his maintenance, than a thousand pounds would be required of him before he began to make anything for himself. A medical man, even one who only desired to become a general practitioner, had to work through a five years' course, with hospital fees. Like the solicitor, he might qualify for about a thousand pounds.

In all the new Professions, chemistry, physics, biology, zoology, geology, botany, and the other branches of science, engineering, mining, surveying, assying, architecture, actuary work—everything—long a apprenticeship was needed with special studies in costly colleges.

In Teaching, he who aspired to the more distinguished branches had no chance at all, unless he was a graduate in the highest honours of Oxford and Cambridge.

In the Arts—painting, sculpture, music—long practice, devoted study, and exclusive thought were essential.

The Civil Service was divided into two branches, both open to competitive examination. The higher branch attracted first-class men of Oxford and Cambridge; the lower, clever and well-taught men from the Middle Class Schools. But the latter could not pass into the former.

In the Army, the only branch in which a man could live upon his pay was the scientific branch, open to anybody who could compete in a very stiff examination after a long and very expensive course of study, and could pay L200 a year for two or three years after entrance. In the other branches of the services, a young lieutenant could not live upon his pay.

In the Navy the examinations were frequent and severe, while the pay was very small.

The barrier, therefore, which kept the Professions in the hands of the upper classes was a simple tollgate. At the toll stood a man. 'Come,' he said, holding out an inexorable palm. 'With an education which has cost you already a thousand pounds, be ready to pay down another thousand more. Then you shall be admitted among the ranks of those for whom are reserved the highest prizes of the State—viz., Authority, Honour, and Wealth.'

It is apparent, then, that no one could enter the Professions who had no money. No need to write up 'None but the sons of gentlemen may apply.' Very many sons of gentlemen, in fact, had to turn away sorrowfully after gazing with wistful eyes upon that ladder which they knew that they, too, could climb, as well as a Denman or an Erskine. As for the sons of poor parents, they could not so much as think of the ladder: they hardly knew that it existed: they cared nothing about it. As well sigh for the Lord Mayor's gilt carriage and four, or the Field Marshal's baton. No poor lad could aspire to the Professions at all. In other words, out of a population of thirty-seven millions, or eight millions of families, the way of distinction was open only to the young man belonging to the half million families—perhaps less—who could expend upon their son's education a thousand pounds apiece.

Nor for a long time was the exclusion felt or even recognised. He who wished to rise out of the working class either became a small master of his own trade, or else he opened a small shop of some kind. But he did not aspire to become a physician or a barrister or a clergyman. And it never occurred to him that such a career could be open to him.

But as happened every day, such a man had got on in the world and was ambitious for his son, he made him a doctor or a solicitor, these being the two Professions which cost least—or perhaps he made him a mechanical engineer, though it might cost a good deal more. Perhaps if the boy was clever, he managed to send him to the University with the intention of getting him ordained. Such was the first upward step in gentility—first, to become a master instead of a servant; then, to belong to a profession rather than a trade. Always, however, one had to settle with the man at the toll.

He was inexorable. 'Pay down,' he said, 'a thousand pounds if you would be admitted within this bar.'

The young man, therefore, whose father worked for wages, or for a small salary, or in a small way of trade, could not so much as dream of entering any of the Professions. They were as much closed to him as the gates of Paradise. But during the nineteenth century a new Profession was created, and this was open to him. This they could not close. It had already grown went and strong before they thought of closing it. It was open to the poor man's son. He went into it. And with the help of it, as with a key, he opened all the rest. You shall understand immediately what this was.

I have spoken of certain exceptions to this exclusion of the lower classes. There were provided at the public schools and the Universities scholarships founded for the purpose of enabling poor lads to carry on their studies. 'The schools had long ceased to be the property of the poor for whom they were designed: their scholarships, mostly of recent foundation, were granted by competitive examination to those boys who had already spent a large sum of money on preliminary work. The scholarships of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge were also given by examination, without the least consideration of the candidates' private resources. There was, however, a chance that a poor lad might get one of these. If he did, everything was open to him. The annals of the Universities contain numberless instances in which lads from the lower middle class made their way, and a few instances—a very few—here one and there one—in which the sons of working men thus forced themselves upward. We must remember these scholarships when we speak of the barrier, but we must not attach too much importance to them. One may also recall many instances of generosity when a bay of parts was discovered, educated, and sent to the University by a rich or noble patron.

In the Army, again, many men rose from the ranks and obtained commissions. In the Navy, this was always impossible, with one or two brilliant exceptions—as the case of Captain Cook.

It may be said that there are many cases on record in which men of quite humble origin have advanced themselves in trade, even to becoming Lord Mayor of London. Could not a poor lad do in the nineteenth century what Whittington did in the fourteenth? Could he not tie up his belongings in a handkerchief and make for London, where the streets were paved with gold, and the walls were built of jasper? Well, you see, in this matter of the poor lad and his elevation to giddy heights there has been a little mistake, principally due to the chap-books. The poor lad who worked his way upward in the nineteenth century belonged to the bourgeoise, not the craftsman class. While his schoolfellows remained clerks, he, by some early good fortune—by marriage, by cousinship, was enabled to get his foot on the ladder, up which he proceeded to climb with strength and resolution. The poor lad who got on in earlier times was the son of a country gentleman. Dick Whittington was the son of Sir William Whittington, Knight and afterwards outlaw. He was apprenticed to his cousin, Sir John Fitzwarren, Mercer and merchant-adventurer, son of Sir William Fitzwarren, Knight. Again, Chichele, Lord Mayor, and his younger brother, Sheriff, and his elder brother, Archbishop of Canterbury, were sons of one Chichele, Gentleman and Armiger of Higham Ferrers in the county of Northampton. Sir Thomas Gresham was the son of Sir Richard Gresham, nephew of Sir John Gresham, and younger brother of Sir John Gresham, also of a good old country family. In fact, we may look in vain through the annals of London city for the rise of the humble boy from the ranks of the craftsmen. Once or twice, perhaps, one may find such a case. If we consider the early years of the nineteenth century, when the long wars attracted to the army all the younger sons, it does seem as if the Mayors and Aldermen must have come from very humble beginnings. Even then, however, we find on investigation that the city fathers of that time had mostly sprung from small shops. They were never, to begin with, craftsmen, and at the end of the century any such rise was never dreamed of by the most ambitious. The clerk, if a lad became a clerk, remained a clerk: he had no hope of becoming anything else. The shopman remained a shopman, his only hope being the establishment of himself as a master if he could save enough money. The craftsman remained a craftsman. And for partnerships there were always plenty—younger sons and others—eager to buy themselves in, or there were sons and nephews waiting their turn. No son of a working man, or a clerk, could hope for any other advancement in the City than advancement to higher salary for long and faithful service.

Once more, then, the situation was this: To him who could afford to earn nothing till he was two-and-twenty, and little till he was five-and-twenty, and could find the money for fees, lectures, and courses and coaches, everything that the country had to offer was open. With this limitation there was never any country in which prizes were more open than Great Britain and Ireland. A clever lad might enter the Royal Engineers or Artillery with a tolerable certainty of being a Colonel and a K.C.B. at fifty; or he might go into the Church where if he had ability and had cultivated eloquence and possessed good manners, he might count on a Bishopric; or he might go to the Bar, where, if he was lucky, he might become a judge or even Lord Chancellor. Unless, however, he could provide the capital wanted for admission, he could attain to nothing—nothing—nothing.

What became, then, of the clever lad? In some cases he became a clerk, crowding into a trade already overcrowded. He trampled on his competitors, because most of them, the sons and grandsons of clerks, had no ambition and no perception of the things wanted. This young fellow had. He taught himself the things that were wanted; he generally took therefore the best place. But he had to remain a clerk.

Or, more often, he became a teacher in a Board School. In this capacity he obtained a certain amount of social consideration, a certain amount of independence, and an income varying From L150 to L400 a year.

Or, which also happened frequently, he might become a dissenting minister of the humbler kind. In that case he had every chance of passing through life in a little chapel at a small town, a slave to his own, and to his congregation's, narrow prejudices.

Or, he might go abroad, to one of the Colonies. Earlier in the century, between the years 1850 and 1880, many poor lads had gone to Australia or New Zealand and had done well for themselves, a few had become millionaires; but by the year 1890 these Colonies, considered as likely places wherein it young man could advance himself, seemed played out. Working-men they wanted, but not clever and penniless young fellows.

He might, it has been suggested, go into the House. There were already one or two workingmen in the House. But they were sent there especially to represent certain interests by working-men, not because their representative was an ambitious and clever young man. And the working-man's member, so far, had advanced a very little way as a political success. It was not in Politics that a young man would find his opening.

This brings us to the one career open to him—he might become a Journalist. It is an attractive profession: and even in its lower walks it seems a branch of literature. There is independence of hours: the pay depends upon the man's power of work: there are great openings in it and—to the rising lad at least—what seems a noble possibility in the shape of pay. Many distinguished men have been journalists, from Charles Dickens downward. Nearly all the novelists have dabbled with journalism; and, since all of us cannot be novelists, the young man might reflect that there are editor, sub-editors, assistant editors, news-editors, leader writers, descriptive writers, reviewers, dramatic critics, art and music critics, wanted for every paper. He could become a journalist and he could rise to the achievement of these ambitions.

At first he rose a very little way, despite his ambition, because in every branch of letters imperfect education is an insuperable obstacle. Still he could become news-editor, descriptive reporter, paragraph writer, and even, in the case of country papers, editor. Sometimes he passed from the office of the journal to that of one of the many societies, where he became secretary and succeeded in getting his name associated with some cause, which gave him some position and consideration. Whether he succeeded greatly or not, his whole object was to pass from the class which has no possible future to the class for which everything is open. His sons would be gentlemen, and if he could only find the necessary funds, they should make what he had been unable to make, an attempt upon the prizes of the State.

This was the situation at the beginning of the last decade of the nineteenth century. It is summed up by saying that all the avenues to honour and power were closed and barred to the lad who could not command a thousand pounds at least. Let us pass on.

Most thoughtful people have considered the growth and development of the great educational movement whose origin belongs to the nineteenth century; whose development so profoundly affects the history of our own.

It began, like the spread of scientific knowledge, and the reforms in the Old Constitution, and everything else, with the introduction of railways. Before the end of the century the country was covered with schools, as it was also covered with railways. There was hardly a man or woman living when the nineteenth century ended who could not read; there were few indeed who did not read. But the school course naturally taught little beyond the elements and was already completed when the pupil reached his fourteenth year. He was then taken from school and put to work, apprenticed—set to something which was to be his trade. Clever or stupid, keen of intellect or dull, that was to be the lot of the boy. He was set to learn how to earn his livelihood.

About the year 1885 or 1890—no exact date can be fixed for the birth of a new idea—began a very remarkable extension of the educational movement. It was discovered by philanthropists that something ought to be done with the boys after they had left school. The first intentions seem to have been simply to keep them out of mischief. Having nothing to do the lads naturally took to loafing about the streets, smoking bad tobacco, drinking, gambling, and precocious love-making. It was also perceived by economists about the same time that unless something was done for technical education, the old superiority of the British craftsman would speedily vanish. It was further pointed out that the education of the Board Schools gave the pupils little more than the mastery of the merest elements, the tools by means of which knowledge could be acquired. In order, therefore, to carry on general education and to provide technical training there were started simultaneously in every great town, but especially in London, Technical Schools, 'Continuation' Classes, Polytechnics, Young Men's Associations and Clubs, Guilds for instruction and recreation—under whatever form they were known, they were all schools.

Then the young working lad was invited to enter himself at one of these places, and to spend his evenings there. 'Come,' said the founders, 'you are at an age when everything is new and everything is delightful. Give up all your present joys. Send the girl with whom you keep company, night after night, home to her mother. Put down your cherished cigarette, cease to stand about in bars, give up drinking beer, go no more to the music-hall. Abandon all that you delight in. And come to us. After working all day long at your trade, come to us and work all the evening at books.'

A strange invitation! To forego delights and live laborious evenings. Stranger still, the lads accepted the invitation. They accepted in thousands. They consented to work every evening as well as every day. The inducements to join were, in fact, artfully devised with a full knowledge of boys' nature. What a boy desires, over and above everything else, more than the company of a girl, more than idleness, more than gambling, more than beer-drinking, more than tobacco, is association with other lads of the same age. These Polytechnics or Institutes or Clubs gave him, first of all, that association. They provided him with societies of every kind. They added recreation to study; pleasure to work. If half of the evening was spent in a classroom, or in a workshop, the other half was passed in orderly amusement. There was, moreover, every kind of choice; the lad felt himself free, there were, to be sure, barriers here and there, but he did not feel them; there was a steady pressure upon him in certain directions, but he did not feel it; in some there were prayer-meetings; the boys were not obliged to go, but some time or other they found themselves present. Then there were some who wore the blue ribbon of temperance; nobody was obliged to assume that symbol, but somehow most of them did, without feeling that they had been pressed to do so. For the very work and life and atmosphere of the place into which beer was not admitted gave them a dislike for beer, with its coarse and rough associations. Insensibly the boy who joined was led upward to a nobler and higher level.

The motives which were strong enough to persuade a working lad to work on, over hours, may he partly understood by considering one of these Institutions—the largest and the most popular—the Polytechnic of Regent Street, called familiarly the Regent Street 'Poly,' with its thirteen thousand members. Take first its social side, as offering naturally greater attractions than its educational side. It contained about forty clubs. The new member on joining was asked in a pamphlet these three questions:

1. 'Do you wish to make friends?'

2. 'Are you anxious to improve yourself?'

3. 'Do you seek the best opportunities of recreation in your leisure hours?'

Observe that the serious object is placed between the other two. What the Poly lads said to the new member was: 'Come in and have a good old time with us.' It was for the good old time that the new member joined. Once in he could look about him and choose. The Gymnasium, the Boxing Club, the Swimming Club, the Roller-skating Club, the Cricket, Football, Lawn Tennis, Athletic, Rowing, Cycling, Ramblers and Harriers Clubs all invited him to join. Surely, among so many clubs there must be one that he would like. Of course they had their showy uniform, their envied Captains and other officers, their field days, their public days, and their prizes. Or there was the Volunteer Corps, with its Artillery Brigade, and its Volunteer Medical Staff Corps. There was the Parliament, conducted on the same rules as that of the House of Commons. For the quieter lads there were Sketching, Natural History, Photographic, Orchestral, and Choral Societies. There was a Natural History Society and an Electrical Engineering Society. There were also associations for religious and moral objects; a Christian Workers' Union, a Temperance Society, a Social League, a Polytechnic Mission, and a Bible Class. There were reading-rooms and refreshment-rooms; in the suburbs there were playing-fields for them. Up the river was a house-boat for the Rowing Club, the largest on the Thames. Add to all this an intense 'College feeling'; an ardent enthusiasm for the Poly; friendships the most faithful; a wholesome, invigorating, stimulating atmosphere; the encouragement always felt of bravo endeavour and noble effort, and high principle—in one word the gift to the young fellows of the working class of all that the public schools and universities could offer that was best and most precious. Such an institution as the Polytechnic—mother and sister of so many others—was a revolution in itself.

But for the second question: 'Are you anxious to improve yourself?' What answer was given? Strange to say the answer was also very decidedly in the affirmative.

The young fellows were anxious to improve themselves. Now, mark the difference between these working lads and the boys from the public schools. Had such a question been put to the latter their answer would have been a contemptuous stare, or a contemptuous laugh. Improve themselves? They were already improved. They were so far improved that nine-tenths of them were contented with the moderate amount of knowledge necessary for the practice of their professions. If one became a solicitor, a doctor, a schoolmaster, a barrister, a clergyman, it was sufficient for him, in most cases, just to pass the examinations. Then, no further improvement for the rest of their natural life. But these others, who had everything to gain, whose ambitions were just awakening, who were just beginning to understand that there was every inducement to improve themselves, joined the classes, and began to work with as much zeal as they showed in their play.

What they learned concerns us little. It may be recorded, however, that they learned everything. Practical trades were taught; technical classes were held; there was a School of Science in which such subjects as chemistry, physics, mathematics, mechanics, building, were taught. There was a School of Art, in which wood modelling, carving, and other minor arts were taught, as well as painting and drawing. There was a Commercial School for Arithmetic, Book-keeping, Shorthand, Typewriting; French, German, etc., were taught; there were Musical Classes, Elocution Classes, a School of Engineering, a School of Photography. Enough; it will be seen that everything a lad might desire to learn he could learn and did learn.

But the Polytechnic was only one of many such institutions. In London alone there existed, in the year 1893, between two and three hundred, large and small; there were nearly fifty branches of the University Extension Scheme; the Continuation classes were held in many Board Schools, while of special clubs, mostly for athletic purposes, the number was legion. As for the numbers enrolled in these associations, already in 1893, when those things were all young, one finds 13,000 members of the Regent Street Poly, 4,000 at the People's Palace; the same number at the Birkbeck; the same at the Goldsmiths' Institute; at the City of London College, 2,500; and so on. Of the Athletic Clubs the Cyclists' Union alone contained no fewer than 20,000 members.

Figures may mean anything. It is, however, significant that in a population of five millions which gives perhaps 700,000 young men between fifteen and twenty, of whom about 100,000 were below the rank of craftsmen and 100,000 above, there should have been found a few years after the introduction of the system about 70,000 youths wise enough and resolute enough to join these classes.

It must be owned that only the more generous spirits—the nobler sort—were attracted by the Polytechnics. They were a first selection from the mass. Of these, again, another selection was made—those few who studied the things which at first sight appeared to be least useful. Everyone who knew a craft could see the wisdom of acquiring perfection in his trade; everyone who was a clerk, or who hoped to become a clerk, could see the advantage of learning shorthand, book-keeping, French and German. What did that boy aim at who studied Latin, Greek, and Mathematics, matriculated and took his degree at the London University, then an examining body only? Why did he learn time things? He did not learn them, remember, in the perfunctory way in which a public-school boy generally works through his subjects; he learned as if he meant to know these subjects; he devoured his books; he tore the heart out of them; he compelled them to give up their secrets. He had everything to get for himself, while the public-school boy had everything given to him.

When it was done, when he had acquired as much knowledge as any average boy from the best public school, when he had read in the Poly Reading Room all that there was to read, what was he to do? For when he looked about him he saw, stretching before him, fair and stately, the long avenues which led to distinction; but before each there was a toll-gate, and at the gate stood a man, saying, 'Pay me first a thousand pounds. Then, and not till then, you shall enter.'

Alas! and he had not a sixpence—he, or his parents. And so perforce he must stand aside, while other lads, without his intellect and courage, paid the money, and were admitted.

There was but one outlet. He might become a journalist. He had learned shorthand, a necessary accomplishment; therefore, he got an appointment as reporter and general hand on a country paper. Such a youth in these years of which we write was uncommon, but he very soon became much more common. The charm of learning was discovered by one lad after another. The chance of exchanging the craftsman's work for the scholar's work, never thought of before, fired the brains of hundreds first, and thousands afterward. Then began a rage for learning. All those who had abilities even mediocre tried to escape their lot by working at the higher subjects. It was reproached to the Polytechnics that their original purpose, to bring the boys together for common discipline and orderly recreation, and to train them in their crafts, was departed from, and that all their energies were now devoted to turning working lads into classical scholars, mathematicians, logicians, and historians.

Nor was the complaint wholly unfounded. But it was too late to recede. The boys crowded to the classes; they read and worked with incredible eagerness; they thought that to be a man of books was better than to be a man with a saw and a plane. Ambition seized them seized them by tens of thousands; they would rise. Learning was their stepping-stone. The recreative side of the Polytechnics was lost in the educational side. Never before had there been such an ardour, such a thirst for knowledge; yet only for knowledge as a means to rise. And there was but one outlet. That, in the course of a few years, became congested. Journalism, as the number of papers increased, demanded more workmen, and still more. These young men from the Polytechnic filled up every vacancy. They had seized upon this profession and made it their own; those who did not belong to them were gradually, but surely, ousted. It was recognised that it was the profession of the young man who wanted to get on. Some there were who affected to lament an alleged decay; the old scholarly style, they said, was gone; there was also gone the old reverence for authority, rank, and the established order. Perhaps the journal, as the new men made it, was above all vigorous. But it was true, which could not always be said of the papers before their time. From their college—the old Poly—the young men carried away a love of truth and right dealing which, once imported into the newspaper press, made it an engine far more mighty—an influence far more potent—than ever it had been before. There may have been some loss in style, though many of them wrote gracefully, and many showed on occasion a wonderful command of wit, sarcasm and satire. But because the papers were always truthful the writers always knew what they wanted, and so their work had the strength of directness.

A few, but very few, continued at the work, whatever it might be, to which they had been apprenticed. Then their lives were spent in a day of painful drudgery, followed by an evening of delightful study. Very few heard of these men. Now and then one would be discovered by a clergyman working in his parish; now and then one emerged from obscurity by means of a letter or a paper contributed to some journal. Most of them lived and died unknown.

Yet there was one. His case is remarkable because it first set rolling the ball of reform, He was by trade a metal turner and fitter; he had the reputation of being an unsociable man because he went home every day after work and stayed there; he was unmarried and lived alone in a small, four-roomed cottage near Kilburn, one of a collection of Workmen's villages. Here it was known that he had a room which he had furnished with a furnace, a table, shelves and bottles, and that he worked every evening at something. One day there appeared in a scientific paper an article containing an account of certain discoveries of the greatest importance, signed by a name utterly unknown to scientific men. The article was followed by others, all of the greatest interest and originality. The man himself had little idea of the importance of his own discoveries. When his cottage was besieged by leaders in the world of science, he was amazed; he showed his simple laboratory to his visitors; he spoke of his labours carelessly; he told them that he was a metal turner by trade, that he worked every day for an employer at a wage of thirty-five shillings a week, and that he was able to devote his evenings to reading and research. They made him an F.R.S., the first working man who had ever attained that honour. They tried to get him put upon the Civil List, but the First Lord of the Treasury had already, according to the usual custom, given away the annual grant made by the House for Literature, Science and Art, to the widows and daughters of Civil servants. This attempt failing, the Royal Society, in order to take him away from his drudgery, created a small sinecure post for him, and in this way found an excuse for giving him a pension.

Then some writer in a London 'Daily' asked how it was that with his genius for science, which, it was now recalled, had been remarked while he was a student at the South London Poly, this man had been allowed to remain at his trade.

And the answer was, 'Because there is no opening for such an one.'

It is very astonishing, when we consider the obvious nature of certain truths, to remark how slow man is to find them out. Now, this exclusion of all those who could not afford to pay his toll to the man at the gate had, up to that moment, been accepted as if it were a law of Nature. As in other things, men said, if they talked about the matter at all, 'What is, must be. What is, shall be. What is, has always been. What is, has been ordained by God Himself.' There is nothing more difficult than to effect a reform in men's minds. The reformer has, first, to persuade people to listen. Sometimes he never succeeds, even in this, the very beginning. When they do listen, the thing, being new to them, irritates them. They therefore call him names. If he persists they call him worse names. If they can, they put him in prison, hang him, burn him. If they cannot do this, and he goes on preaching new things, they presently begin to listen with more respect. One or two converts are made. The reformer expands his views; his demands become larger; his claims far exceed the modest dimensions of his first timid words. And so the reform, bit by bit, is effected.

At first, then, the demand was for nothing more than an easier entrance into the scientific world, This naturally rose out of the case. 'Let us,' they said, 'take care that to such a man as this any and every branch of science shall be thrown open. But for that purpose it is necessary that scholarships, whether given at school or college, shall be sufficient for the maintenance as well as for the tuition fees of those who hold them.' These scholarships, it was argued, had been founded for poor students, and belonged to them. All the papers took up the question, and all, with one or two exceptions, were in favour of 'restoring'—that was the phrase—'his scholarships'; 'his,' it was said, assuming that they were his originally—to the poor man. In vain was it pointed out that these scholarships had been for the most part founded in recent times when public schools and universities had long become the property of the richer class, and that they were needed as aids for those who were not rich, not as means of maintenance for those who wanted to rise out from one class into another.

The cry was raised at the General Election; the majority came into power pledged to the hilt to restore his scholarships to the poor student. Then, of course, a compromise was effected. There was created a class of scholarships at certain public schools for which candidates had to produce evidence that they possessed nothing, and that their parents would not assist them. Similar scholarships were created at Oxford and Cambridge, out of existing revenues, and it was hoped that concessions opening all the advantages that the public schools and universities had to give would prove sufficient. By this time the country was fully awakened to the danger of having thrown upon their hands a great class of young men who thought themselves too well educated for any of the lower kinds of work, and were too numerous for the only work open to them. No one, as yet, it must be remembered, had ventured to propose throwing open the Professions.

The concessions were found, however, to make very little difference. Now and then a lad with a scholarship forced his way to the head of a public school, and carried off the highest honours at the University. Mostly, however, the poor scholar was uncomfortable; he could neither speak, nor think, nor behave like his fellows; the atmosphere chilled him; too often he failed to justify the early promise; if he succeeded in getting a 'poor' scholarship at college, he too often ended his University career with second-class Honours, which were of no use to him at all, and so he was again face to face with the question: What to do? His college would not continue to support him. He could not get a mastership in a good school because there was a prejudice against 'poor' scholars, who were supposed incapable of acquiring the manners of a gentleman. So he, too, fell back upon the only outlet, and tried to become a journalist.

Every day the pressure increased; the pay of the journalist went down; work could be got for next to nothing, and still the lads poured into the classes by the thousand, all hoping to exchange the curse of labour by their hands for that of labour by the pen. No one as yet had perceived the great truth which has so enormously increased the happiness of our time that all labour is honourable and respectable, though to some kinds of labour we assign greater, and some lesser, honour. The one thought was to leave the ranks of the working man.

It is not to be supposed that this great class would suffer and starve in silence. On the contrary, they were continually proclaiming their woes; the papers were filled with letters and articles. 'What shall we do with our boys?' was the heading that one saw every day, somewhere or other. What, indeed! No one ventured to say that they had better go back to their trade; no one ventured to point out that a man might be a good cabinet-maker although he knew the Integral Calculus. If one timidly asked what good purpose was gained by making so many scholars, that man was called Philistine, first; obstructive, next; and other stronger names afterward. And yet no one ventured to point out that all the Professions—and not science only, through the Universities—might be thrown open.

Sooner or later this suggestion was certain to be made. It appeared, first of all, in an unsigned letter addressed to one of the evening papers. The writer of the letter was almost certainly one of the suffering class. He began by setting forth the situation, as I have described it above, quite simply and truly. He showed, as I have shown, that the Professions and the Services were closed to those who had no money. And he advanced for the first time the audacious proposal that they should be thrown open to all on the simple condition of passing an examination. 'This examination,' he said, 'may be made as severe as can be desired or devised. There is no examination so severe that the students of our Polytechnics cannot face and pass it triumphantly. Let the examination, if you will, be intended to admit none but those who have taken or can take first-class Honours. The Poly students need not fear to face a standard even so high as this. Why should the higher walks of life be reserved for those who have money to begin with? Why should money stand in the way of honour? Among the thousands of young men who have profited by the opportunities offered to them there must be some who are born to be lawyers; some who are born to be doctors; some who are born to be preachers; some who are born to be administrators.' And so on, at length. It was not, however, by a letter in a paper, or by the leading articles and the correspondence which followed that the suggested change was effected. But the idea was started. It was talked about; it grew as the pressure increased it grew more and more. Meetings were held at which violent speeches were delivered: the question of opening the Professions was declared of national importance; at the General Election which followed some months after the appearance of the letter, members were returned who were pledged to promote the immediate throwing open of all the Professions to all who could pass a certain examination; and the first step was taken in opening all commissions in the Army to competitive examination.

The Professions, however, remained obstinate. Law and Medicine refused to make the least concession. It was not until an Act of Parliament compelled them that the Inns of Court, the Law Institute, the Colleges of Physicians, Surgeons, and Apothecaries consented to admit all-comers without fees and by examination alone.

Then followed such a rush into the Professions as had never before been witnessed. Already too full, they became at once absolutely congested and choked. Every other man was either a doctor or a solicitor. It was at first thought that by making examinations of the greatest severity possible the rush might be arrested. But this proved impossible, for the simple reason that an examination for admission, necessarily a mere 'pass' examination, must be governed and limited by the intellect of the average candidate. Moreover, in Medicine, if too severe an examination is proposed, the candidate sacrifices actual practice and observation in the Hospital wards to book-work. Therefore the examinations remained much as they always had been, and all the clever lads from all the Polytechnics became, in an incredibly short time, members of the Learned Professions.

There can be no doubt that the Bench and the Bar, that Medicine and Surgery, owe to the emancipation of the Professions many of their noblest members. Great names occur to every one which belong to this and that Polytechnic, and are written on the walls in letters of gold as an encouragement to succeeding generations. One would not go back to the old state of things. At the same time there were losses and there are regrets. So great, for instance, was the competition in Medicine that the sixpenny General Practitioner established himself everywhere, even in the most fashionable quarters; so numerous were solicitors that the old system of a recognised tariff was swept away and gave place to open competition as in trade. That the two branches of the law should be fused into one was inevitable; that the splendid incomes formerly derived from successful practice should disappear was also a matter of course. And there were many who regretted not only the loss of the old professional rules and the old incomes, but also the old professional esprit de corps—the old jealousy for the honour and dignity of the profession: the old brotherhood. All this was gone. Every man's hand was against his neighbour; advocates sent in contracts for the job; the physicians undertook a case for so much; the surgeon operated for a contract price; the usages of trade were all transferred to the Professions.

As for the Services, the Navy remained an aristocratic body; boys were received too young for the Polytechnic lads to have a chance; also, the pay was too small to tempt them, and the work was too scientific. In the Army a few appeared from time to time, but it cannot be said that as officers the working-classes made a good figure. They were not accustomed to command; they were wanting in the manners of the camp as well as those of the court; they were neither polished enough nor rough enough; the influence of the Poly might produce good soldier obedient, high-principled, and brave; but it could not produce good officers, who must be, to begin with, lads born in the atmosphere of authority, the sons of gentlemen or the sons of officers. Yet even here there were exceptions. Every one, for instance, will remember the case of the general—once a Poly boy—who successfully defended Herat against an overwhelming host of Russians in the year 1935.

It was not enough to throw open the Professions. Some there were in which, whether they were thrown open or not, a new-comer without family or capital or influence could never get any work. Thus it would seem that Engineering was a profession very favourable to such new-comers. It proved the contrary. All engineers in practice had pupils—sons, cousins, nephews—to whom they gave their appointments. To the new-comer nothing was given. What good, then, had been effected by this revolution? Nothing but the crowding into the learned Professions of penniless clever lads? Nothing but the destruction of the old dignity and self-respect of Law and Medicine? Nothing but the degradation of a Profession to the competition of trade?

Much more than this had been achieved. The Democratic movement which had marked the nineteenth century received its final impulse from this great change. Everyone knows that the House of Lords, long before the end of that century, had ceased to represent the old aristocracy. The old names were, for the most part, extinct. A Cecil, a Stanley, a Howard, a Neville, a Bruce, might yet be found, but by far the greater part of the Peers were of yesterday. Nor could the House be kept up at all but for new creations. They were made from rich trade or from the Law, the latter conferring respect and dignity upon the House. But lawyers could no longer be made Peers. They were rough in manners, and they had no longer great incomes. Moreover, the nation demanded that its honours should be equally bestowed upon all those who rendered service to the State, and all were poor. Now a House of poor Lords is absurd. Equally absurd is a House of Lords all brewers. Hence the fall of the House of Lords was certain. In the year 1924 it was finally abolished.

In the next chapter I propose to relate what followed this rush into the Professions. We have seen how the grant of the higher education to working lads caused the Conquest of the Professions and brought about the change I have indicated. We have seen how this revolution was bound to sweep away in its course the last relics of the old aristocratic constitution of the country. It remains to be told how learning, when it became the common possession of all clever lads, ceased to be a possession by which money could be made, except by the very foremost. Then the boys went back to their trades. If the reign of the gentleman is over, the learning and the power and culture that has belonged to the gentleman now belongs to the craftsman. This, at least, must be admitted to be pure gain. For one man who read and studied and thought one hundred years ago, there are now a thousand. Editions of good books are now issued by a hundred thousand at a time. The Professions are still the avenues to honours. Still, as before, the men whom the people respect are the followers of science, the great Advocate the great Preacher, the great Engineer, the great Surgeon, the great Dramatist, the great Novelist, the great Poet. That the national honours no longer take the form of the Peerage will not, I think, at this hour, be admitted to be a subject for regret by even the stanchest Conservative.

[1893.]



I.—THE LAND OF ROMANCE



At the back of the setting sun; beyond the glories of the evening; on the other side of the broad, mysterious ocean, lay for nine generations of Englishmen the Land of Romance. It began—for the English youth—to be the Land of Romance from the very day when John Cabot discovered it for the Bristol merchants it continued to be their Land of Romance while every sailor-captain discovered new rivers, new gulfs, and new islands, and went in search of new north-west passages, while the rovers, freebooters, privateers and buccaneers, put out in their crazy, ill-found craft, to rob and slay the Spaniard; while the mystery of the unknown still lay upon it; long after the mystery had mostly gone out of it, save for the mystery of the Aztec; it remained the Land of Romance when New England was fully settled and Virginia already an old colony; it was the English Land of Romance while King George's redcoats fought side by side with the colonials, to drive the French out of the continent for ever.

We have had India, as well. Surely, in the splendid story of the long struggle with France for the Empire of the East, in the achievements of our soldiers, in the names of Clive, Lawrence, Havelock; in the setting of the piece, so to speak, in its people, its wisdom, its faith, its cities, its triumphs, its costumes, its gold and silver and precious stones and costly stuffs—there is material wherewith to create a romance of its own, sufficient to fire the blood and stir the pulse and light the eye. Or, we have had Australia, New Zealand, the Cape of Good Hope; coral isles, strongholds, fortresses, islands here, and great slices and cantles of continent there. We have had all these possessions, but round none of these places has there grown up the romance which clung to the shores of America, from the mouth of the Orinoco round the Spanish Main, and from Florida to Labrador. This romance formerly belonged to the whole of our people. In their imaginations—in their dreams—they turned to America. There came a time when this romance was destroyed violently and suddenly, and, apparently, for ever. In another shape it has grown up again, for some of us; it is taking fresh root in some hearts, and putting forth new branches with new blossoms, to bear new fruit. America may become, once more, the Land of Romance to the Englishman. I say with intent, the Englishman. For, if you consider, it was the Englishman, not the Scot or the Irishman, who discovered America by means of John Cabot and his Bristol merchants—not to speak of Leif, the son of Eric, or of Madoc, the Welshman. It was the Englishman, not the Scot or the Irishman, who fought the Spaniard; who sent planters to Barbadoes; who settled colonists and convicts in Virginia; from England, not from Ireland or Scotland, went forth the Pilgrims and the Puritans. While the Scottish gentlemen were still taking service in foreign courts—as, for example, the Admirable Crichton with the Duke of Mantua—the young Englishman was sailing with Cavendish or Drake; he was fighting and meeting death under desperadoes, such as Oxenham; he was even, later on, serving with L'Olonnois, Kidd, or Henry Morgan. All the history of North America before the War of Independence is English history. Scotland and Ireland hardly came into it until the eighteenth century; till then their only share in American history was the deportation of rebels to the plantations. The country was discovered by England, colonized by England; it was always regarded by England as specially her own child; the sole attempt made by Scotland at colonization was a failure; and to this day it is England that the descendants of the older American families regard as the cradle of their name and race.

As for the men who created this romance, they belong to a time when the world had renewed her youth, put the old things behind, and begun afresh, with new lands to conquer, a new faith to hold, new learning, new ideas, and new literature. Those who sit down to consider the Elizabethan age presently fall to lamenting that they were born three hundred years too late to share those glories. Their hearts, especially if they are young, beat the faster only to think of Drake. They long to climb that tree in the Cordilleras and to look down, as Drake and Oxenham looked down, upon the old ocean in the East and the new ocean in the West; they would like to go on pilgrimage to Nombre de Dios—Brothers, what a Gest was that!—and to Cartagena, where Drake took the great Spanish ship out of the very harbour, under the very nose of the Spaniard, they would like to have been on board the Golden Hind, when Drake captured that nobly laden vessel, Our Lady of the Conception, and used her cargo of silver for ballasting his own ship. Drake—the 'Dragon'—is the typical English hero; he is Galahad in the Court of the Lady Gloriana; he is one of the long series of noble knights and valiant soldiers, their lives enriched and aglow with splendid achievements, who illumine the page of English history, from King Alfred to Charles Gordon.