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Of my father's ancestors I know nothing, nor of my mother's more than that my maternal grandmother was the landlady of the Old King's Head' in Market Street, Croydon; and I wish she were alive again, and I could paint her Simone Memmi's King's Head' for a sign." And he adds: "Meantime my aunt had remained in Croydon and married a baker. My aunt lived in the little house still standing or which was so four months ago*-the fashionablest in Market Street, having actually two windows over the shop, in the second story" (sic).

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There are slums at Croydon even now, for Croydon is a highly civilised progressive place, and slums and slum populations are the exclusive products of civilisation and progress, and a very severe indictment of them. But they are new slums; those poverty-stricken districts created ad hoc, which seem more hopeless than the ancient. purlieus, and appear to be as inevitable to and as inseparable from modern great towns as a hem to a handkerchief.

The old quarter of Croydon began to fall into the slum condition at about the period of Croydon's first expansion, when the oi Toλλo impinged too closely upon the archiepiscopal precincts, and their Graces, neglecting their obvious duty in the manner customary to Graces spiritual and temporal, retired to the congenial privacy of Addington.

Here stands the magnificent parish church of * Preface to "Præterita," dated May 10th, 1885.

A CLERICAL PROPHET

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Croydon; its noble tower of the Perpendicular period, its body of the same style, but a restoration, after the melancholy havoc caused by the great fire of 1867. It is one of the few really satisfactory works of Sir Gilbert Scott; successful because he was obliged to forget his own particular fads and to reproduce exactly what had been destroyed. Another marvellous replica is the elaborate monument of Archbishop Whitgift, copied exactly from pictures of that utterly destroyed in the fire. Archbishop Sheldon's monument, however, still remains in its mutilated condition, with a scarred and horrible face calculated to afflict the nervous and to be remembered in their dreams.

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The vicars of Croydon have in the long past been a varied kind. The Reverend William Clewer, who held the living from 1660 until 1684, when he was ejected, was a smiter," an extortioner, and a criminal; but Roland Phillips, a predecessor by some two hundred years, was something of a seer. Preaching in 1497, he declared that "we (the Roman Catholics) "must root out printing, or printing will root out us." Already, in the twenty years of its existence, it had undermined superstition, and was presently to root out the priests, even as he foresaw.

Unquestionably the sight best worth seeing in Croydon is that next-door neighbour of the church, the Archbishop's Palace. Comparatively few are those who see it, because it is just a little way off the road and is private property and shown

only by favour and courtesy. When the Archbishops deserted the place it was sold under the Act of Parliament of 1780 and became the factory of a calico-printer and a laundry. Some portions were demolished, the moat was filled up, the "minnows and the springs of Wandel" of which Ruskin speaks, were moved on, and mean little streets quartered the ground immediately adjoining. But, although all those facts are very grim and grey, it remains true that the old palace is a place very well worth seeing.

It was again sold in 1887, and purchased by the Duke of Newcastle, who made it over to the so-called "Kilburn Sisters," who maintain it as a girls' school. I do not know, nor seek to inquire, by what right, or with what object, the "Sisters" who conduct the school affect the dress of Roman Catholics, while professing the tenets of the Church of England; but under their rule the historic building has been well treated, and the chapel and other portions repaired, with every care for their interesting antiquities, under the eyes of expert and jealous anti-restorers. The Great Hall, chief feature of the place, still maintains its fifteenthcentury chestnut hammerbeam roof and armorial corbels; the Long Gallery, where Queen Elizabeth danced, the State bedroom where she slept, the Guard Room, quarters of the Archbishops' bodyguard, are all existing; and the Chapel, with oaken bench-ends bearing the carved arms of Laud, of Juxon, and others, and the Archbishops' pew, has lately been brought back to decent con