it in the numberless comforts, and even magnificences old and lofty cloisters, ... spacious schoolrooms, well-ordered, airy, and lofty rooms . . stately dining-hall, hung round with pictures by Verrio, Lely, and others, one of them surpassing in size and grandeur almost any other in the kingdom," etc., etc. And then,

"Let those judge, I say, who have compared this scene with the abject countenances, the squalid mirth, the broken-down spirit, and crouching, or else fierce and brutal deportment to strangers, of the very different sets of little beings who range round the precincts of common orphan schools and places of charity."

Later, Lamb speaks with a disgust which not even his judicial and dignified apologetics could repress, of William Wales's (the stern old seaman-pedagogue at the hospital, and the friend of Captain Cook, whom he accompanied on the famous voyages) "king's boys" (referred to above). These were, Lamb was sure, absolute nuisances to the rest of the school; hardy, brutal, often wicked, the most graceless lump in the whole mass, throwing into consternation the juvenile fry when the cry was raised in the cloisters" The First Order is coming!-for so they termed the first form or class of those boys," the terror of the apprentices and butcher boys of the "vicinage' and market. There were, says Lamb:

"

"Our solemn processions through the City at Easter, with the Lord Mayor's largess of buns, wine, and a shilling, with the festive questions and civic pleasantries of the dispensing Aldermen, which were more to us than all the rest of the banquet; our stately suppings in public, where the welllighted hall, and the confluence of well-dressed company who came to see us, made the whole look more like a concert or assembly, than a scene of a plain bread and cheese collation. . . . Let me have leave to remember our hymns and anthems, and well-toned organ; the doleful tune of the burial anthem chanted in the solemn cloisters, upon the seldom-occurring funeral of some school-fellow; the festivities at Christmas, when the richest of us would club our stock to have a gaudy day, sitting round the fire, replenished to the height with logs, and the penniless, and he that could contribute nothing, partook in all the mirth, and in some of the substantialities of

the feasting; the carol sung by night at the time of the year, which, when a young boy, I have so often lain awake to hear from seven (the hour of going to bed) till ten, when it was sung by the older boys and monitors, and have listened to it, their rude chanting, till I have been transported in fancy to the fields of Bethlehem, and the song which was sung at the season by angels' voices to the shepherds."

Still extant is the appeal of John Lamb, Charles Lamb's father, for his son to be received into the hospital; dated March 30th, 1781, it states that the petitioner has “a Wife and three Children, and he finds it difficult to maintain and educate his Family without some Assistance." One of the children, however, was aged eighteen. The presentation was made by a certain Timothy Yeats, who signed the necessary bond for £100, and made himself responsible for the boy's discharge. Lamb was admitted July 17th, 1782, and clothed October 9th, 1782, remaining until November, 1789.

Leigh Hunt was educated at Christ's Hospital till his fifteenth year.

"I was then deputy Grecian and had the honour of going out of the school in the same rank, at the same age, and for the same reason as my friend Charles Lamb. . . I hesitated in my speech. It was understood that a Grecian was bound to deliver a public speech before he left school, and to go into the Church afterwards; and as I could do neither of these things, a Grecian (i.e., an upper boy subsequently to be sent with a scholarship to the University) I could not be.'"

In addition to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and the lesser star of second magnitude, Leigh Hunt, men of letters in the Christ's Hospital firmament number among them Samuel Richardson, the famous eighteenth century novelist of sentiment. One may also mention. Wm. Camden, the well-known antiquary; Bishop Stillingfleet; A. W. Pugin, ecclesiologist and architect; Dr. Gordon Hake, who was Dante Gabriel Rossetti's physician; Sir Henry Maine, the well-known jurist who applied "historical " methods to the study of political institutions,

and who, as casual readers of the Morning Post know, is often quoted as a sort of metaphorical bludgeon for the attempted demolition of democratic, Socialist, or sometimes Radical theories and projects. He is the author of the Early History of Society and its Relation to Modern Ideas. Sir Louis Cavagnari, the Indian diplomatist, murdered at Cabul by Afghans, was also an old Bluecoat scholar.

In 1803 the building was surveyed and was found to be in a dilapidated condition. In consequence, an appeal was made for public assistance, and a subscription list, headed by the Corporation of London with a donation of £1,000, was contributed to "splendidly" by the several city companies, individual governors and the nobility and gentry, and a stately pile erected therewith in 1825-29.

Among those only remembered now by an anecdote are Robert Allen, the "Grecian," "with the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh," who, one day, mischievously ran against a barrow-woman in the street, and “incensed her with a provoking pinch." She, turning" tigress-like round, exchanged the half-formed terrible bl- .' for a gentler greeting- bless thy handsome face!'" And Dr. George Townsend, a kind-hearted man of strange simplicity, who actually visited Rome in an attempt to persuade the Pope to make such doctrinal and ritual concessions as might lead to an amalgamation of the Roman and Protestant Churches !

The hospital, or, at any rate, the boys' section, is now on the downs at West Horsham, Sussex, the growth of greater London having obviously rendered necessary its removal from the din of the traffic passing by the old Newgate site.* On the lines of a public school, with chapel, dining-hall, class-rooms, gymnasium, swimming baths, science schools, it stands on forty acres and comprises ⚫ sixteen boarding houses for 820 boys. There is also, at

• Now demolished (since 1893) to make room for offices, warehouses and an extension of St. Bartholomew's Hospital.

Hertford, a fine girl's public school constituting the other section of the foundation.

Christ's Hospital ex-officio governors are the Lord Mayor of London, the aldermen, and twelve common councillors. What are known as " donation governors," i.e., the Crown, Royal family, and ladies or gentlemen (200 in number) who have given not less than £500 to the funds, are also on the hospital's board. To-day the endowments produce approximately £60,000 yearly, almost wholly from legacies and benefactions subsequent to the foundation, and are administered by the council of almoners of forty-three members, appointed by the governors themselves, and by various public bodies. Under the Charity Commissioners' scheme of 1890 (afterwards amended), children are admitted by presentation between nine and eleven years (applicable to or exercised by the council of almoners, "donation" governors, children of persons distinguished in literature, science, art, or for services to the public or to the hospital, sons of commissioned officers in the navy or army, and certain London city livery companies); by competition, between nine and thirteen years of age, on the nomination of donation governors (for boys only), from English and Welsh endowed schools, regulated by the Endowed Schools Act; and lastly, by competition among London elementary school children (nine to twelve years) and certain city parishes and endowed schools.

In regard to the right of competition among " endowed schools in England and Wales," the writer may be permitted to quote his personal experience, twenty-three years ago, of how this particular portion of the scheme worked. As a scholarship holder (from one of the old "Board" or elementary schools), at a then lower grade secondary school at Gloucester, which had attached to it this right of election of boys by competition to the hospital, he found (as did others) that a pompous headmaster, willing instrument of an obscurantist governing body, would permit only the paying scholars, sons of the