now fastened was certainly not the
most exalted or exciting of the public offices. The estimation in which
it was held in official circles is aptly illustrated by a pleasantry of
that eminent Civil Servant, Sir Algernon West. When the Revised Version
of the New Testament appeared, Gladstone asked Sir Algernon (who had
begun life in the Treasury), if he thought it as good as the Authorized
Version. "Certainly not," was the reply. "It is so painfully lacking in
dignity." Gladstone, always delighted to hear an innovation censured
(unless he himself had made it), asked for an illustration. "Well," said
West, "look at the Second Chapter of St. Luke. _There went out a decree
from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed._ Now that always
struck me as a sublime conception--a tax levied on the whole world by a
stroke of the pen--an act worthy of an Imperial Treasury. But I turn to
the Revised Version, and what do I read? _That all the world should be
enrolled_--a census--the sort of thing the Local Government Board could
do. That instance, to my mind, settles the question between Old and
New."

But in the office thus contemned by the Paladins of the Treasury, there
was plenty of interesting though little-observed work. In the autumn of
1883 I undertook, in conjunction with the President of the Board, a
mission of enquiry into the worst slums in London. There is no need to
recapitulate here all the horrors we encountered, for they can be read
in the evidence given before the Royal Commission on the Housing of the
Poor which was appointed in the following year; but one incident made a
peculiar impression on my mind. The Sanitary Officer reported some
underground dwellings in Spitalfields as being perhaps the worst
specimens of human habitation which we should find, and he offered to be
my guide. I entered a cellar-like room in a basement, which, till one's
eyes got used to the dimness, seemed pitch-dark. I felt, rather than
saw, the presence of a woman, and, when we began to talk, I discerned by
her voice that she was not a Londoner. "No, sir," she replied, "I come
from Wantage, in Berkshire." Having always heard of Wantage as a kind of
Earthly Paradise, where the Church, the Sisterhood, and the "Great
House" combined to produce the millennium, I said, involuntarily, "How
you must wish to be back there!" "Back at Wantage!" exclaimed the Lady
of the Cellar. "No, indeed, sir. This is a poor place, but it's better
than Wan