y-eight years of his episcopate,
of which no less than 107 were in London.

Lay organization may be said to have commenced but recently. The first
District Visiting Society of which I have heard, writes Mr. Bosanquet,
was founded in connexion with St. John's Chapel, Bedford Row, of which
Daniel Wilson, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, was visitor. The Parochial
Women Mission Fund was established in 1860. This association does not
send its agents into any parish without a written application from the
incumbent, who selects both the agent and her lady superintendent. There
are now about 100 agents at work in London, acting chiefly in the
capacity of Bible-women. For the young men connected with the Church
there is a Church of England Young Men's Society in Fleet Street, with
fifteen branches in London and the suburbs; of 200 members on the books,
more than half are engaged as teachers in Sunday-schools or other lay
work. Then there is the Metropolitan Visiting and Relief Association,
21, Regent Street, formed in 1843, to distribute the contributions of
charitable persons in such parts of the town as most need them, by means
of the clergy and their district visitors. For that part of London which
is in the diocese of Winchester there is the South London Visiting and
Relief Association. How well laymen can work is understood in the
neighbourhood of Drury Lane, where more than 500 of the lowest and the
poorest in that district may be seen any Sunday afternoon at two
Bible-classes conducted by laymen. Another lay agency in operation is
the Workhouse Visiting Society.

In spite of all these organizations the Church of England as regards
London has not yet fulfilled her mission. The harvest is plentiful, the
labourers are few. Clergymen in the East say they would be glad of lay
help from the West; but it does not come. In some parts of London there
are parishes containing from 15,000 to 30,000 people, and in such a
clergyman is almost unable to do his duty, in spite of his curates and
paid lay agents. In most cases the number of visitors is quite
insufficient. Mr. Bosanquet refers to a friend of his who had told him
that some months after entering on a very poor cure in the south of
London he had twenty-eight districts for visitors, but that twenty-seven
were hopelessly vacant, and that the twenty-eighth was taken by his wife.
This reminds me that some of the ladies of the clergy, especially in the
East and poorer