So the matter rested for nearly twenty years before the happy news came that the London County Council had come into possession of the ecclesiastical fields, and converted them into a holy park, where pale-faced mothers and sickly children may stroll or disport themselves at will evermore. All honour to the later agents of this merciful change. There is an open gleam of Nature now in the doleful district. Sir Hudibras exclaims: "What perils do environ Him who meddles with cold iron." Not less so if the meddlement be with ecclesiastical iron and the contest lasts a longer time. CHAPTER XXXIII. SOCIAL WONDERS ACROSS THE WATER Being several times in France, twice in America and Canada, thrice in Italy and as many times in Holland, under circumstances which brought me into relation with representative people, enabled me to become acquainted with the ways of persons of other countries than my own. There I met great orators, poets, statesmen, philosophers, and great preachers of whom I had read--but whom to know was a greater inspiration. Thus I learned the art of not being surprised, and of regarding strangeness as a curiosity, not an offence awakening resentment as something unpardonable, or at least, an impropriety the traveller is bound to reprehend, as Mrs. Trollope and her successors have done on American peculiarities. On the Continent I found incidents to wonder at, but I confine myself in this chapter to America and Canada, countries we are accustomed to designate as "Across the Water," as the United States and the Dominion which have imperishable interest to all of the British race. Notwithstanding the thousands of persons who now make sea journeys for the first time, I found, when it came to my turn, there was no book--nor is there now--on the art of being a sea passenger. I could find no teaching Handbook of the Ocean--what to expect under entirely new conditions, and what to do when they come, so as to extract out of a voyage the pleasure in it and increase the discomforts which occur in wave-life. One of the pleasures is--there is no dust at sea. On my visit to America in 1879, I, at the request of Mr. Hodgson Pratt, undertook to inquire what were the prospects of emigrants to that country and Canada, which cost me labour and expense. What I found wanting, and did not exist, and which does not exist still, was an emigrant guide book informing him of the conditions of industry in different States, the rules of health necessary to be observed in different climates, and the vicissitudes to which health is liable. The book wanted is one on an epitome plan of the People's Blue Books, issued by Lord Clarendon on my suggestion, as he stated in them.