ing the last century the Precinct cane to
be inhabited almost entirely by sailors, belonging to every nation and
every religion under the sun.

This was the place which it was permitted to certain promoters of a
Dock Company to destroy utterly. A place with a history of seven
hundred years, which might, had its ecclesiastical character been
preserved and developed, have been converted into a cathedral for East
London; or, if its secular character had been maintained, might have
become a noble centre of all kinds of useful work for the great
chaotic city of East London. They suffered it to be destroyed. It has
been destroyed for sixty years. As for calling the place in Regent's
Park St. Katherine's Hospital, that, I repeat, is absurd. There is no
longer a St. Katherine's Hospital. As well call the garish new
building on the embankment Sion College. That is not, indeed, Sion
College. The London Clergy, who, of all people, might have been
expected to guard the monuments of the past, have sold Sion College
for what it would fetch. The site of the Cripplegate nunnery; of
Elsing's Spital for blind men; of Sion College, or Clergy House, has
been destroyed by its own trustees. The sweet old place, the
peacefullest spot in the whole city, with its long low library, its
Bedesmen's rooms, and its quiet reading room, is gone. You might just
as well destroy Trinity College, Cambridge, and then stick up a modern
wing to Somerset House, and call that Trinity. In the same way St.
Katherine's by the Tower was destroyed sixty years ago.

Let me repeat that the Hospital suffered four changes.

First, it was founded by Queen Matilda, for the repose of her
children's souls. Next, it was dissolved and again founded, and
subsequently endowed as a Religious House with chantries, certain
definite duties of masses for the dead, certain charitable trusts, and
other functions. Thirdly, when the Mass ceased to be said it was
secularized completely. Service was held in the church, but the
Hospital became a perfectly secular charity, supporting a few
almspeople with niggard hand, and a Master in great splendour.
Fourthly, it was again treated as a semi-ecclesiastical foundation,
for reasons which do not appear. At the same time, while its charities
were enlarged, no duties were assigned to the Brothers, who seem to
have been considered as Fellows, forming the Society, and, therefore,
like the Fellows at Oxford and Cambridge, obliged to be in Holy