see "sights" of poverty and depravity; you can have them
nearer home--at home--in the murky streets, sinister courts, crowded
houses, dim cellars, and noisy drinking dens of St. Saviour's
district. Pass through it, move quietly along its parapets--leaving
a tour through its internal institutions for some future occasion--
and you will see enough to convince you that many missionaries, with
numerous Bibles and piles of blankets, are yet wanted at home before
being despatched to either farthest land or the plains of Timbuctoo.
The general scene may be thus condensed and described: Myriads of
children, ragged, sore-headed, bare-legged, dirty, and amazingly
alive amid all of it; wretched-looking matrons, hugging saucy,
screaming infants to their breasts, and sending senior youngsters
for either herring, or beer, or very small loaves; strong, idle
young men hanging about street corners with either dogs at their
feet, or pigeon-baskets in their hands; little shops driving a brisk
"booking" business with either females wearing shawls over their
heads or children wearing nothing at all on their feet; bevies of
brazen-faced hussies looking out of grim doorways for more victims
and more drink; stray soldiers struggling about beer or dram shops
entrances, with dissolute, brawny-armed females; and wandering old
hags with black eyes and dishevelled hair, closing up the career of
shame and ruin they have so long and so wretchedly run.

Anybody may see the sights we have just described. We mention this
not because there is anything pleasing in it, but because it is
something which exists daily in the heart of our town--in the centre
of St. Saviour's district. No locality we know of stands more in
need of general redemption than this, and any Christian church, no
matter whatever may be its denominational peculiarities, which may
exist in it, deserves encouragement and support. The district is so
supremely poor, and so absolutely bad, that anything calculated to
improve or enlighten it in any way is worthy of assistance. A
Baptist chapel was built in the quarter we are now describing--it
was erected in Leeming-street, at the corner of Queen-street--in
1783. Fifty years afterwards it was enlarged; subsequently the
Baptists couldn't agree amongst themselves; the parties to the
quarrel then separated, some going to Pole-street Chapel, others
forming a new "church"--that now in Fishergate; and on the 10th of
August, 1859, the old buildin