ressive and turned into a by-way. As he did so, a
street organ began to play in front of a public-house close by. Grail
drew near; there were children forming a dance, and he stood to watch
them.

Do you know that music of the obscure ways, to which children dance?
Not if you have only heard it ground to your ears' affliction beneath
your windows in the square. To hear it aright you must stand in the
darkness of such a by-street as this, and for the moment be at one with
those who dwell around, in the blear-eyed houses, in the dim burrows of
poverty, in the unmapped haunts of the semi-human. Then you will know
the significance of that vulgar clanging of melody; a pathos of which
you did not dream will touch you, and therein the secret of hidden
London will be half revealed. The life of men who toil without hope,
yet with the hunger of an unshaped desire; of women in whom the
sweetness of their sex is perishing under labour and misery; the laugh,
the song of the girl who strives to enjoy her year or two of youthful
vigour, knowing the darkness of the years to come; the careless
defiance of the youth who feels his blood and revolts against the lot
which would tame it; all that is purely human in these darkened
multitudes speaks to you as you listen. It is the half-conscious
striving of a nature which knows not what it would attain, which
deforms a true thought by gross expression, which clutches at the
beautiful and soils it with foul hands.

The children were dirty and ragged, several of them barefooted, nearly
all bare-headed, but they danced with noisy merriment. One there was, a
little girl, on crutches; incapable of taking a partner, she stumped
round and round, circling upon the pavement, till giddiness came upon
her and she had to fall back and lean against the wall, laughing aloud
at her weakness. Gilbert stepped up to her, and put a penny into her
hand; then, before she had recovered from her surprise, passed onwards.

He came out at length by Lambeth parish church, which looks upon the
river; the bells were ringing a harsh peal of four notes, unchangingly
repeated. Thence he went forward on to Lambeth Bridge.

Unsightliest of all bridges crossing Thames, the red hue of its iron
superstructure, which in daylight only enhances the meanness of its
appearance, at night invests it with a certain grim severity; the
archway, with its bolted metal plates, its wire-woven cables,
over-glimmered with the yellowness of