As a part of its original provision for the relief of some of the applicants who, after long residence in this country, had fallen into a distressed condition at an age when they were unable any longer to maintain themselves by their own exertions, the society instituted the almshouses at Lower Norwood. There is now an impression among the directors of the charity that their intentions may be carried out in future by some better method than placing a number of aged and frequently infirm persons in a comparatively remote group of dwellings, where they are peculiarly lonely, and lack frequent personal attention and general sympathy. There can be no doubt that almshouses have frequently been associated a little too closely with that monastic or conventual practice with which they mostly originated, and that the retirement, almost amounting to seclusion, into which the inmates of such places are removed, may be very far from affording to the aged the kind of asylum which they most desire. Alas, in many instances, to be placed in an almshouse is to be put out of the way,—to be conveniently disposed of; with the inference that every possible provision has been made for comfortable maintenance. Thus, susceptibilities are quieted. The aged pensioners are supposed to be periodically visited; their wants attended to by somebody or other who "sees {46} that they are all right," and the whole matter is conveniently forgotten, except when a casual traveller passes a quaint, ancient, mouldy-looking, but still picturesque block of buildings, and inquires to what charity they belong; not without a kind of uneasy fancy that there is a custom in this country of burying certain old people before their time—shutting them out of the light and warmth of every-day companionship; or, to change the metaphor, making organised charity a kind of Hooghly, on the tide of which the aged, who are supposed to be nearing the end of their mortal life, are floated into oblivion until the memory of them is revived by death. It is no part of my intention to represent that the almshouses at Lower Norwood bore such a significance, but the conditions to which I have referred appear to be so inevitable where places like these are concerned, that I cannot question the good sense of the directors of the Charity in determining to supersede them, and to carry on the work by annual or monthly pensions only. On behalf of the few remaining inmates of these queer, half-deserted, and failing tenements, it was desirable that the proposition should be acted on at once, and a more comfortable provision be made, at least, for those who wait on, with constantly deferred hope, doubly heart-sickening when so little time is to be counted on, in which something will be done before the houses themselves, crumbling to decay, become but a type of their own forlorn old age.