It will be replied that these are all Houses in the country. That is quite true; yet I think that, considering the attacks on the Religious; the decay of the Friars; the withdrawal of bequests from monks and friars alike,—the London Houses must have been open at least to charges of laxity; and I would not press against them anything more severe. In the admonition of the Dean of St. Paul’s to the Nuns of St. Helen’s, laxity, not vice, was the principal complaint. Those who believe that graver charges might be brought may read the famous accusation against the Abbot of St. Albans—a thing, to my mind, impossible to get over. True, St. Albans is not London, which is a saving clause. Enough about the condition of the Houses and the morality of the Religious. I hear certain whispers where men congregate: they murmur—_tacenda_. I have no proof that they are true; but I understand that the holiness of the Religious is no longer accepted as a matter of course; it is enough for one that this is so. The work of the Houses is done when the people no longer desire the prayers of brethren _inclusi_, and sisters immured; and no longer expect the pristine devotion of the Friars. The suppression of the Religious Houses and its immediate effects in London are passed over by Stow, in his _Survey_, with great brevity. It is a pity; we should like so much to have a clear understanding of how the people at large received these measures. Now this historian was born in 1525; he could remember, therefore, not only the Dissolution, but also the condition of the City under the old _régime_. It is much to be lamented, further, that though he could find time and space to give whole pages to the Coronation of Anne Boleyn, he could not give more than a brief note on the suppression of one House after another. He remembered the Franciscans going in and about everywhere in their grey gowns; the Dominicans in black; the Carmelites in white; he remembered the riding apparel of the monks; he remembered—he notices, in fact—the hospitality of the richer houses; he remembered the stately churches towering above the humble parish churches, as Westminster above St. Margaret’s; St. Augustine’s over Peter le Poor; the Holy Trinity over St. Catherine Cree; their peals of bells; their organs; their treasures of gold and silver plate; their church furniture, sumptuous with cloth of gold and velvet. He remembered the splendour, wealth, authority, and power of the old ecclesiastics. Their authority seemed rooted in the solid rock, never to be destroyed; and he remembered how this substantial ecclesiastical structure vanished at a word, at a touch, leaving behind it nothing but ruined cloisters; churches desecrated; carvings and marbles broken up. In his old age he sat alone and marvelled over these things. But he spoke not. Perhaps it was dangerous, even for a historian, to speak—Stow had already been accused of being a favourer, at least, of the old Order; regrets were