In a great city like London there are many sources of pleasure completely overlooked. If people complain that life is dull—that it is monotonous—that it presents to them few objects of interest or attraction—I fancy they have chiefly themselves to blame. No man or woman either with heart or head need lead a barren life either in the country or in town. There is always something to do, to see, or to hear, and in London especially is there much to hear of which Londoners know but little. Such, at any rate, was the reflection of the writer one Thursday night as he made his way along the Hampstead Road to a neat little iron church on the left-hand side as you go from the City, and just before you reach Mornington Crescent. Every Sunday morning there preaches there the Rev. Thomas Lynch, the author of some choice prose and poetry—a man at whom there was a dead set made by certain religionists a few years ago, but who has long outlived that, and to whom that time of trial and of trouble was undoubtedly a most blessed event, inasmuch as it taught the gentle author of the “Rivulet” his strength, both as regards himself and as regards the best of our religious teachers; and inasmuch as it demonstrated to all anew, and more clearly than ever, how hard, how cruel, how unmerciful dogmatic theologians could become. At that time Mr. Lynch was preaching in a chapel in one of the streets running from Tottenham Court Road into Fitzroy Square. He is now nearer Camden Town, and preaches in a building between which and the pastor there seems to be a kind of resemblance and sympathy; at any rate, as much as can exist between what is abstract and concrete—between matter and mind. The church is no Gothic edifice, hoary with time, but slender and modern, and, as much as possible, graceful. You wonder it has not been swept away by the storms of winter. A similar feeling exists when you look at Mr. Lynch. There are great mountains of men, whose tread is terrible, whose laugh is volcanic, whose heads are rugged rocks, whose bodies are bulls of Bashan, whose speech is as the roar of an angry sea, whose faces in summer parch you up like burning suns, or in winter darken you with angry clouds. To this genus Mr. Lynch does in no way belong. The fairies who assisted at Mr. Lynch’s birth did very little for him physically—at any rate, they robbed his bones of all flesh, and made his outward frame as spare as possible. It is to be wished also that they had endowed him with better health. Yet his figure cannot be termed ungraceful or his appearance unattractive. In his dress he is scrupulously neat. Even on weekday services he wears the white handkerchief, which when round the neck denotes that you are a swell on your way to dinner, or a waiter, or a gentleman of the clerical profession. His grey eye is full of enthusiasm, and kindles up a pale, dark face that otherwise might be dull. His voice is stronger and clearer than you would expect.