the seaside for the delight of the children, but speedily
deserted on its becoming a natural vermin preserve for all the petty
fauna of Kingsland, Hackney and Hoxton. A bandstand, an unfinished
forum for religious, anti-religious and political orators, cricket
pitches, a gymnasium, and an old fashioned stone kiosk are among its
attractions. Wherever the prospect is bounded by trees or rising green
grounds, it is a pleasant place. Where the ground stretches far to the
grey palings, with bricks and mortar, sky signs, crowded chimneys and
smoke beyond, the prospect makes it desolate and sordid.

The best view of Victoria Park is from the front window of St.
Dominic's Parsonage, from which not a single chimney is visible. The
parsonage is a semi-detached villa with a front garden and a porch.
Visitors go up the flight of steps to the porch: tradespeople and
members of the family go down by a door under the steps to the
basement, with a breakfast room, used for all meals, in front, and the
kitchen at the back. Upstairs, on the level of the hall door, is the
drawing-room, with its large plate glass window looking on the park. In
this room, the only sitting-room that can be spared from the children
and the family meals, the parson, the Reverend James Mavor Morell does
his work. He is sitting in a strong round backed revolving chair at the
right hand end of a long table, which stands across the window, so that
he can cheer himself with the view of the park at his elbow. At the
opposite end of the table, adjoining it, is a little table; only half
the width of the other, with a typewriter on it. His typist is sitting
at this machine, with her back to the window. The large table is
littered with pamphlets, journals, letters, nests of drawers, an office
diary, postage scales and the like. A spare chair for visitors having
business with the parson is in the middle, turned to his end. Within
reach of his hand is a stationery case, and a cabinet photograph in a
frame. Behind him the right hand wall, recessed above the fireplace, is
fitted with bookshelves, on which an adept eye can measure the parson's
divinity and casuistry by a complete set of Browning's poems and
Maurice's Theological Essays, and guess at his politics from a yellow
backed Progress and Poverty, Fabian Essays, a Dream of John Ball,
Marx's Capital, and half a dozen other literary landmarks in Socialism.
Opposite him on the left, near the typewriter, is the door. Furthe