hness of so
many, and the awful depression of the multitude. She says that a system
which produces, or permits, such a state of things must be bad, and
radically bad.

There are moments, when she speaks of these things, which reveal to one
a certain anger of her soul, a disposition, if I may say so with great
respect, towards vehemence, a temper of impatience and indignation which
would surely have carried her into the camp of anarchy but for the
restraining power of her religious experience. She feels, deeply and
burningly, but she has a Master. The flash comes into her eyes, but the
habitual serenity returns.

I think, however, she might be persuaded to believe that it is not so
much the present system but the pagan selfishness of mankind which
brings these unequal and dreadful things to pass. The lady in the closed
carriage would not be profoundly changed, we may suppose, by a different
system of economics, but surely she might be changed altogether--body,
soul, and spirit--if she so willed it, by that Power which has directed
Miss Royden's own life to such beautiful and wonderful ends.

Nevertheless, Miss Royden must be numbered among the socialists, the
Christian socialists, and Individualism will be all the better for
asking itself how it is that a lady so good, so gentle, so clear-headed,
and so honest should be arrayed with its enemies.

I should like to speak of one memorable experience in Miss Royden's
later life.

She has formed a little, modest, unknown, and I think nameless guild for
personal religion. She desires that nothing of its work should get into
the press and that it should not add to its numbers. She wishes it to
remain a sacred confraternity of her private life, as it were the lady
chapel of her cathedral services to mankind, or as a retreat for her
exhausted soul.

Some months ago she asked a clergyman who has succeeded in turning into
a house of living prayer a London church which before his coming was
like a tomb, whether he would allow the members of this guild, all of
whom are not members of the Church of England, to come to the Eucharist.
He received this request with the most generous sympathy, saying that he
would give them a private celebration, and one morning, soon after dawn,
the guild met in this church to make its first communion. No one else
was present.

Miss Royden has told me that it was an unforgettable experience. Here
was a man, she said, who has no reputation as a g