This was all that Edgar picked up out of a flood of unimportant communications. He could not even find any clue to the place where these denominational records were kept, and by this time the day was too far advanced to do more. Drearily he left the grimy little street, with its damp pavements, its poor little badly-lighted shops and faint lamps, not without encountering the new Rector in person, an omniscient personage, who had already heard of his inquiries, and regarded him suspiciously, as perhaps a “Methody” in disguise, planning the restoration of dissent in a locality just purged from its taint. Edgar was too tired, too depressed and down-hearted to be amused by the watchful look of the muscular Christian, who saw in him a wolf prowling about the fold. He made his way into the main road, and jumped into a hansom, and drove down the long line of shabby, crowded thoroughfare, so mean and small, yet so great and full of life. Those miles and miles of mean, monotonous street, without a feature to mark one from another, full of crowds of human creatures, never heard of, except as counting so many hundreds, more or less, in the year’s calendar of mortality--how strangely impressive they become at last by mere repetition, mass upon mass, crowd upon crowd, poor, nameless, mean, unlovely! Perhaps it was the general weariness and depression of Edgar’s whole being that brought this feeling into his mind as he drove noisily, silently along between those lines of faintly-lighted houses towards what is impertinently, yet justly, called the habitable part of London. For one fair, bright path in the social, as in the physical world, how many mean, and darkling, and obscure!--how small the spot which lies known and visible to the general eye!--how great the confused darkness all round! Such reflections are the mere growth of weariness and despondency, but they heighten the depression of which they are an evidence.