HAVE you ever read essays of Elia, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, or Vanity Fair? Then I am sure of your interest in a few words about those two old schools, Christ Hospital and Gray Friars, from whose walls have gone out, not only Charles Lamb, Coleridge, and Thackeray, but many more of England's noblest writers and workers.

Bidding a truce to dates, Christ Hospital was founded three hundred years ago by the boy-king Edward VI., in a large monastery whose inmates had been driven out in the hostile reign of bluff King Hal. Starting with 350 scholars, it has now 1200; but it is not a charity school, as the term is commonly used: the officers annually nominate a certain number of children, who are supported by the rent of lands belonging to the school; by this means the blue-coat boy is saved from the conceited snobbishness of the Etonians and the servility of those whom he would opprobriously call chizzywags. This honorable dependence, which can neither lessen self-respect nor increase self-conceit, makes the school thoroughly republican in custom and feeling, the only aristocracy being that of talent and good-fellowship, so that even when the sons of a gentleman and his coachman were school-fellows, the same respect was extended to both. Besides this, the school owes much of its high tone to its old traditions, ceremonies, buildings, and even dress,* all of which tend to impress a boy with the importance of his position and the necessity of keeping up the honor and dignity of the school. One of the most interesting of the old ceremonies is the public supper in the great dining-hall (adorned with pictures by Verrio, Lely, and Holbein), which is attended by the Lord Mayor and Governor, in company with many distinguished gentlemen and ladies; as the visitors enter, the whole vast assembly of boys rise, and, led by organ and choristers, make the arches ring with anthems, preserved in the school from the time of the old monks. But much of our interest in the school lies in the illustrious names on its roll (names such as Bishop Middleton and Bishop Stillingfleet, Camden, Markland, and Richardson; the first of England's novelists) and in stories of Charles Lamb and Coleridge, "the inspired charity-boy," pacing the cloisters together, or Leigh Hunt withstanding some "little tyrant," in spite of blows and cuffs so painful to his sensitive nature. These last three have left us interesting accounts of the time when they were blue-coat boys, and of their savage old teacher, Mr. Bowyer, who has been immortalized by a bon-mot of Coleridge's when he heard of his fatal illness: "Poor J. B., may all his faults be forgiven, and may he be wafted to bliss by little cherub-boys, all head and wings, with no bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities."

Very much like this fine old school was and is that of Gray Friars, the name of which reminds us that it too was established in one of the monasteries of that great order now hardly represented but by the monks of the Grande Chartreuse. The founder of Gray Friars, however, was not a king, but a very ordinary person, though wise beyond most men in the disposal of his fortune, - one Thomas Sutton, whose death, December 14, 1611, is yearly commemorated on Founder's Day by the whole school, as all will remember who have read the Newcomes, though in that beautiful description Thackeray has not given the quaint verse regularly sung on that occasion, which runs, -

Then blessed be the memory

Of good old Thomas Sutton,

Who gave us lodging, - learning, -

And he gave us beef and mutton."

Gray Friars, however, is very small in comparison with Christ's, there being but fifty scholars on the foundation, yet the proportion of celebrated men is very large, - Addison, "loose Dick Steele," Thurlwall, Grote, Sir John Leech, and Thackeray standing high in the list of graduates. The last-named, Thackeray, was always very fond of his old school, and just before his death went on Founder's Day to scatter pennies among the boys.

In the same building with the school are rooms for the old pensioners ("cods," from "codger," the boys called them), whose number, about eighty, the old bell rings out every night just as Big Tom at Oxford gives the number of students in Christ College. There is something very pleasant and even touching in this union under one roof of lives so different as the careless school-boy's, with all the world before him, and the pensioner's in his black gown, with his work all done and only waiting for his dismissal. That most beautiful passage at the end of the Newcomes has been so often quoted that I will not give it here, but only repeat one word, which must bring back that closing scene to any one who has ever read it - a word the old arches have so often echoed to generation after generation of school-boys in the old cloisters, - "Adsum."

*The costume of the boys was a blue tunic, yellow vest, black belt, long yellow stockings, and no hat.