perambulators outside; their eyes, by dint of vain straining towards their natural guardians, painfully acquiring that squint that would seem to be the birthright of so many of the London poor. In strange contrast with the din and bustle of Aldgate and its network of wide streets, are the collegiate buildings of Toynbee Hall, in Commercial Street, close by. This is a curious little oasis in the wilderness, a most unexpected by-way in busy, glaring Whitechapel. To Canon and Mrs. Barnett, who have devoted their lives towards making Toynbee Hall what it is, is due the chief honour for the successful working of this Institution, primarily intended to bring "sweetness and light" into the darkened, unlovely lives of the London poor. The name of Arnold Toynbee, the young and enthusiastic Oxford man and reformer, has been immortalised in this place, the first of the University Settlements in London. Toynbee died young, of overwork and overpressure; in a sense a martyr to his cause; yet the work of this latter-day apostle has already had large results, and his creed has had many followers. To him, dying in his youthful zeal, Tennyson's lines seem specially appropriate: "So many worlds, so much to do, So little done, such things to be, How know I what had need of thee, For thou wert strong as thou wert true? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "O hollow wraith of dying fame, Fade wholly, while the soul exults, And self-infolds the large results Of force that would have forged a name." In some ways, Toynbee Hall, and its successive, and kindred institutions, seem like late revivals of the monastic system of the middle ages. Toynbee Hall is a hall in the academic sense,--and shelters successive batches of some twenty residents,--young university men of strong convictions,--who come here both to learn and to teach;--to teach their less fortunate brothers,--to learn how the poor live. At its hospitable door the sick and suffering apply for help and succour; here charity,--charity, too, of the kind that "blesseth him that gives and him that takes,"--is freely given,--without narrow restrictions of sectarianism or dogma--and it does more than this.