For,--unlike the monastic system,--Toynbee Hall is specially devised to help the individual soul of the poor worker in busy London to rise above its often base and mean surroundings. The late Matthew Arnold, in his well-remembered lecture at Toynbee Hall,--taught the possibility of "following the gleam" even in the "gloom" of the East-End,--and of helping Nature, by the aid of books and of art, from sinking under "long-lived pressure of obscure distress." Books and art are great tonics. The ancient monasteries dissuaded,--if anything,--knowledge, and aspiration generally, in the "masses": Toynbee Hall encourages and promotes it; it is thus a physician to the mind even more than to the body. It raises the aims, improves the tastes, and widens the horizons of its disciples; it satisfies the cravings of the poor for better things; but it must first inculcate such cravings. Within its walls the poor and struggling artisan may enjoy concerts, lectures, pictures;--may learn, too, from the best teachers,--and profit by many of the advantages of university life. There are not only lecture-rooms, but reception-rooms,--dining-rooms,--a library;--the latter a much-valued institution in the neighbourhood. Many pleasant social gatherings are held here;--not only of working men,--but also of factory girls,--shop-hands,--pupil-teachers,--who come here,--these latter,--to cast off the "codes" and dry bones of learning, and acquire a little of its warmer, fuller humanity. Toynbee Hall is not the only place in East London where such works are carried on. Oxford House, Bethnal Green,--and Mansfield House, Canning Town,--are, among others,--institutions more or less of the kind; and the Passmore Edwards Institute, in Tavistock Place, has similar aims. But to Toynbee Hall is due the introduction of yearly loan Exhibitions of good pictures for the East End,--originated by Canon Barnett, and still successfully carried on by his unwearying exertions. The charms of poetic contrast are always great in London. While standing in a dingy byway of some city church--St. Olave's, Hart Street, or St. Jude's, Whitechapel,--does not the deep music of the organ,--resounding from inside the building,--fill the listener with a strange feeling almost akin to tears? Not even outside a country church is one so affected. Here it seems to bring the calm of Eternity into the fitful fever of the moment. The picturesqueness, alone, of religion, is so great, that, to the determined agnostic London would surely lose half its charm. And who could work among the London poor without, at least, something of the feeling so beautifully expressed in Matthew Arnold's well-known lines? "'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, And the pale weaver, through his windows seen In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited.