“The rights thus acquired carry with them the exclusive right of access to the Church, and also (saving any established right of way) to the Churchyard, so that no one can lawfully exclude him from them, nor enter them of their own right, but only by his permission, so long as Incumbent.” Yet it is the Burial Board or the churchwardens who are to see that a burial-ground or a churchyard is kept “in decent order,” and to repair the walls and fences; and if a churchyard is not kept in such order, or is used as a storing yard or for any other unsuitable purposes, both the incumbent and the churchwardens are evidently in fault. But although there have been some cases of gross neglect the London churchyards have, on the whole, been kept fairly well as far as the walls or fences and the tombstones are concerned. A few have certainly degenerated into little less than rubbish heaps, but others have been maintained with great care. The Burial Boards have been conscientious in this respect pretty generally over London, but there are not very many disused burial-grounds under the control of the Burial Boards. A few churchyards, chiefly in the City, have been curtailed for the widening of roads, or altogether sacrificed for railways or new streets; a few additional parochial burial-grounds have also disappeared, and a few, but very few, have been misappropriated and let or sold as builders’ yards, &c. The case was, however, far different, where an unconsecrated burial-ground was in private hands or belonged to three or four chapel trustees, for then the temptation to raise money on it was very great. Nearly all the private grounds and a large number of the Dissenters’ grounds were turned to account, as I have already shown in Chapters VII. and X. [Illustration: BATTERSEA CHURCHYARD ABOUT 1830.] So the churchyards remained, useless, closed and dreary, no one went into them, the children gazed through the palings and their parents deposited wastepaper, dead cats, rotten food, old clothes, &c., in them, and it was twenty years after they had been shut up before any of the disused graveyards were converted into public gardens. It must, of course, be borne in mind that, when first closed, these grounds were very unwholesome, but twenty years did, at any rate, a good deal towards ameliorating their condition, and now that another twenty years have passed we may safely say that no evil effects can accrue from letting people walk about in them, people, that is, who already live with these grounds in their midst. And there is no more sure way of hastening their improvement than by importing fresh soil and planting trees, shrubs and flowers. [Illustration: ST. JAMES’S, PENTONVILLE, IN JANUARY, 1896.]