en we must not estimate
an old church by a modern congregation. There has been a church here
from time immemorial. It is mentioned in the year 1120. It was,
therefore, certainly a Saxon church. Edward the Confessor probably
worshipped here--perhaps King Alfred himself. One of its Rectors was
John Carpenter, executor of Whittington, and founder of the City of
London School; another was Barham, author of the 'Ingoldsby Legends.'
The loss of St. Mary Magdalen is one more link with the past
absolutely destroyed, never to be replaced. These destroyers, for
instance, are the kind of people who pulled down Sion College. As
often as I pass the spot where that place once stood I mourn and
lament its loss more and more. It was the college of the City clergy,
they were its guardians, it was their library, it contained their
reading hall; formerly it held their garden, and it had their
almshouses. There was hardly any place in the City more peaceful or
more beautiful than the long narrow room which held their library. It
was a very ancient site--formerly the site of Elsing's Hospital, the
oldest hospital in the whole City. Everything about it was venerable,
and yet the City clergy themselves--its official guardians--sold it
for what it would fetch, and stuck up the horrid thing on the
embankment which they call Sion College. There they still use the old
seal and arms of the college. But there is no more a Sion
College--that is gone. You cannot replace it. You might as well tear
down King's College Chapel at Cambridge and call Dr. Parker's City
Temple by that honoured and ancient name. Well, for such people as the
majority of the City clergy who can do such things, there can be no
voice or utterance at all from ancient stones, the past can have no
lessons, no teachings for them, there can be no message to them from
the dead who should still live for them in memory and association. For
them the ancient City and its citizens are dumb.

Now that we know what to expect and what to look for, let us take
together a Sunday morning ramble in a certain part of the City. We
will go on a morning in early summer, when the leaves of those trees
which still stand in the old City churchyards are bright with their
first tender green, and when the river, as we catch glimpses of it,
shows a broad surface of dancing waves across to the stairs and barges
of old Southwark. We will take this walk at the quietest hour in the
whole week, between eleven an