The visitor to Gloucester will be surely struck by a quaint old house in Southgate Street—still standing almost unaltered, save that the basement is now divided into two shops. A few years since the old oak timbers were braced, stained, and varnished. It is a fine specimen of the better class of English residences of a hundred and fifty years since, and is still remarkable in the old city, owing very much to the good taste which governed their renovation. This was the printing-office of Robert Raikes, a notice in the _Gloucester Journal_, dated August 19, 1758, announcing his removal from Blackfriars Square to this house in Southgate Street. The house now is in the occupation of Mrs. Watson. The house where Raikes lived and died is nearly opposite. It will not be difficult for the spectator to realise the pleasant image of the old gentleman, dressed, after the fashion of the day, in his blue coat with gold buttons, buff waistcoat, drab kerseymere breeches, white stockings, and low shoes, passing beneath those ancient gables, and engaged in those various public and private duties which we have attempted to record. A century has passed away since then, and the simple lessons the philanthropist attempted to impart to the young waifs and strays he gathered about him have expanded into more comprehensive departments of knowledge. The originator of Sunday-schools would be astonished were he to step into almost any of those which have branched out from his leading idea. It is still expanding; it is one of the most real and intense activities of the Universal Church; but among the immense crowds of those who, in England and America, are conducting Sunday-school classes, it is, perhaps, not too much to say, that in not one is there a more simple and earnest desire to do good than that which illuminated the life, and lends a sweet and charming interest to the memory, of Robert Raikes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XI THE ROMANTIC STORY OF SILAS TOLD. Dr. Abel Stevens, in his _History of Methodism_, says, “I congratulate myself on the opportunity of reviving the memory of Silas Told;” and speaks of the little biography in which Silas himself records his adventures as “a record told with frank and affecting simplicity, in a style of terse and flowing English Defoe might have envied.”