About seven men and eight women can be received within the walls, but there are seldom the full number {219} there, because it is necessary to discriminate carefully. The object is to relieve immediate and painful distress, and to give that timely aid which averts starvation by the gift of food, and prevents the degradation of pauperism by means of advice, assistance, and just so much support as will give the stricken and friendless men or women time to recover from the first stupor of hopelessness or the dread of perishing, and at the same time afford the opportunity of proving that they are ready and willing to begin anew, with the consciousness that they have not been left desolate. {220} GIVING REST TO THE WEARY. We have not yet done with this wonderful district of Soho. It is one of those attractive quarters of London, which is interesting alike for its historical associations and for memorable houses that were once inhabited by famous men. In essays, letters, fiction—all through that period which has been called the Augustan age of English literature—we find allusions to it; and after that time it continued to be the favourite resort of artists, men of letters, wealthy merchants, and not a few statesmen and eminent politicians. In Leicester Square, Hogarth laughed, moralised, and painted. The house of Sir Joshua Reynolds stands yet in that now renovated space, and a well-known artist has a studio there to-day. But the tide of fashion has receded since powdered wigs and sedan chairs disappeared. The tall stately houses are many of them dismantled, or are converted into manufactories and workshops. The great iron extinguishers which still adorn the iron railings by the doorsteps have nearly rusted away. It must be a century since the flambeaux carried by running footmen were last thrust into them, when great rumbling, creaking coaches drew up and landed visitors before the dimly-lighted {221} portals. Silence and decay are the characteristics of many a once goodly mansion; and the houses themselves are not unfrequently associated with the relief of that poverty which is everywhere so apparent as to appeal to almost every form of charity. Before one such house we are standing now, its quietly opening door revealing a broad lofty hall, from which a great staircase, with heavy baluster of black oak and panelled walls leads to the spacious rooms above. This mansion is historical, too, in its way, for we are at the corner of Soho Square, in Greek Street, and are about to enter what was once the London residence of the famous Alderman Beckford, and his equally famous son—the man who inherited the mysterious and gorgeously furnished palace at Fonthill, the author of "Vathek," the half-recluse who bought Gibbon's extensive library at Lausanne, that he might have "something to amuse him when he went that way," and afterwards went that way, read himself nearly blind, and then made a friend a present of all the books, sold Fonthill,