some time after the fancy of Sir Walter Besant was translated into fact, were not always sanguine as to the feasibility of civilizing their young patrons, even through the agency of pictures or swimming baths, thick slices of bread and butter, buns, and fried haddock purchasable not much above, if not something below, cost price. To-day, though the social deportment in the pleasure grounds of Bethnal Green may lack the superficial polish, and the innate breeding, of the crowds at the Westminster Aquarium or the South Kensington Museum, a considerable advance is recorded on the part of the Harrys and the Harriets of Poplar and Whitechapel towards the carriage and conduct of the cynosures of less outlandish suburbs on Bank Holiday. There is no body of men who know unfashionable London better, or who deserve more honour for the service which they render to it than the members of the London City Mission. The work of these missioners, though undenominational, is religious rather than æsthetic. But they are shrewd observers of the social aspects of the neighbourhoods they visit. Their opinion of the practical results of the agencies that have here been described may be summed up in the words of a missioner to the present writer: 'It marks an epoch in East End civilization of which ten years ago Christian charity would itself have despaired.' The functions exercised by the controlling authority of the Working Men's Club and Institute Union are educational as well as disciplinary. There is no reason now why any one of the affiliated societies, however impecunious it may be or however impoverished the district wherein it may exist, should be without as good a library as one of Mr Mudie's subscribers, or should not know almost as much about the history and antiquities of the British capital as the late Dean Stanley himself. The controllers of the union often make liberal advances in money for the purchase of books by the local clubs. Should these funds not be forthcoming, book boxes with wisely chosen contents circulate among the members of a Home Readers' Union. The volumes thus distributed are real literature. The subjects to which they relate are methodically mastered by the readers who themselves have selected them, and have not acted on the initiative of the more highly educated residents, Peripatetic encyclopædias like Mr Augustus Hare or Mr Percy Fitz-Gerald are ever ready to 'take walks' with them. Omniscient divines, such as Dean Bradley or Dean Farrar personally conduct them through their cathedrals into the heart of English history. Nor are the literary studies chosen merely because they are likely to help the student in his everyday work, and therefore improve his earnings. The biographies of the statesmen and soldiers of old Greece, the dramatic vicissitudes of the Republics of mediæval Italy, even the philosophy as well as the language of Dante or of Macchiavelli are taken up by men after