Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/317

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z6i seat in the place. The food provided was unpalatable and insufficient. I went to see the little Community when I could. Two of the members I knew intimately ; one, wearied and discouraged, passed over to Rome ; the other, a very handsome man, married a rich wife, who purchased for him a living, and he settled down and flattened out into ecclesiastical and spiritual mediocracy, and was rewarded with a canonry. In 1857 the old Danish Chapel in Wellclose Square was secured for the Mission, and two priests were installed there in charge, whilst Mr. Lowder and another remained in Calvert Street. The two former after a while departed, and somewhat later submitted to the Roman Church. In 1859 there were six clergy labouring in the parish, with a large staff of lay assistants ; and six hundred children were under instruction in the six schools that had been set on foot. The riots at St. George's-in-the-East began in 1859, and lasted till September 25, i860, when, by order of Tait, Bishop of London, the church was closed. The rector, the Rev. Bryan King, had been absent and abroad through ill-health, and the services had been discharged by Mr. Lowder. I was down there during the riots, and when the rector had returned ; his wife was the sister of a college friend, named Far dell. It is not my intention to describe the repulsive scenes I then and there witnessed. I have done that already in my Church Revival. The riots were organized, it was shrewdly suspected, and subsidized by the Church Association. " Bless you, sir," said a young man who attended the night-school in Calvert Street, to Mr. Rowley, the schoolmaster, " it is all a question of beer and what else they can get. Religion ain't anything more to them than it is to us. They gets paid for what they do, and they does it, like as they'd do any other job." That which was the most painful part of the business was the attitude of Tait, the Bishop, during the continuance of the riots. In Ephesus, when S. Paul had to fight " with beasts," the pagan town-clerk did his utmost to pacify the people. Bishop Tait did nothing but cast sops to the rioters. In the end, many years later, I went down to S. Peter's, London Docks, the large and stately church erected in the midst of those slums into which Father Lowder had cast himself; and when