The number of children attending during the year 1890 was 864, and altogether the Kensington National Schools are an institution of which the parish may well be proud. I have now concluded the task I set myself, of endeavouring to explain to you the endowed charities of Kensington. Of course there are numberless other most admirable and deserving charities in the parish endeavouring to provide for the temporal and spiritual necessities of a population of 188,000 souls, but upon these neither the scope nor the limits of my paper allow me to touch. May I hope that the enumeration of all these almost exclusively ancient charitable bequests to the parish, and the slight survey of the good they have accomplished I have been able to give this evening, may awake in the minds and hearts of those possessing means a feeling of emulation with their ancestors, and lead them by adding to the endowments of the existing parish charities and by the foundation of new ones, to prove that Kensington still deserves the reputation it has long enjoyed of an eminently christian and charitable parish. May I be permitted one word relative to myself before I sit down: I undertook the preparation of this paper some two months ago, at the urgent request of the Secretary of the Kensington Ratepayers’ Association. I then had no idea, nor do I think anyone else had, that I should be called upon to take an active part in the management of these charities to which my paper has related. When in the country during the Easter holidays engaged in the study of the charities of Kensington for the purposes of this paper as a holiday task, I heard that I had received the unsolicited and unexpected appointment of Churchwarden of Kensington, and am therefore now to administer as part of my duties the very charities of which I have been discoursing. The labour of love I undertook in the preparation of this paper will not then be thrown away after its immediate purpose has been served, but the knowledge I have gained will greatly aid me in the performance of my duties. And may I finally conclude by saying what I am sure we all feel and endeavour to practice, that it is the duty of every individual to do what he can according to his opportunities on behalf of the general cause of charity, and that by endeavouring to ameliorate the condition of our fellow creatures, we better and improve our own, and what is even of greater importance, enlarge and stimulate our own hearts and sympathies. FOOTNOTES {16} Towards building the Girl’s School £500 was appropriated out of the £2,278 8_s._ 8_d._ South Sea Stock. {17a} These houses apparently cost over £2,500, which was provided by the sale of capital in 1863 and 1866. {17b} The land is now freehold, not copyhold, having been converted. {17c} The present endowment is—