representative of the poorest class, living somewhere in that venal
slum of slime and misery behind the church. A considerable number of
those floating beings called "strags" attend the Parish Church. They
go to no place regularly; they gravitate at intervals to the church,
mainly on the ground that their fathers and mothers used to go
there, and because they were christened there; but they belong a
cunning race; they can scent the battle from afar, and they
generally keep about three-quarters of a mile from the Parish Church
when a collection has to be made. To the ordinary attendants,
collections do not operate as deterrents; but to the "strags" they
are frighteners. "What's the reason there are so few people here?"
we said one day to the beadle, and that most potent, grave, and
reverend seignior replied, with a Rogersonian sparkle in his rolling
eye, "There's a collection and the 'strags' won't take the bait." It
is the same more or less at every place of worship; and to tell the
truth, there's a sort of instinctive dislike of collections in
everybody's composition.

The congregation of our Parish Church is tolerably numerous, and
embraces many fine human specimens. Money and fashion are well
represented at it; and as Zadkiel and the author of Pogmoor Almanac
say those powers have to rule for a long time, we may take it for
granted that the Parish Church will yet outlive many of the minor
raving academies in which they are absent. There is touch more
generalisation than there used to be as to the sittings in our
Parish Church; but "birds of a feather flock together" still. The
rich know their quarters; exquisite gentlemen and smart young ladies
with morrocco-bound gilt-edged Prayer Books still cluster in special
sections; and although it is said that the poor have the best part
of the church allotted to them, the conspicuousness of its position