IN Mr. Lambs "Works," published a year or two since, I find a magnifit eulogy on my old school*, such as it was, or noears to him to have beeween the 1782 and 1789. It happens, very oddly, that my own standing at Christs was nearly corresponding with his; and, with all gratitude to him for his enthusiasm for the cloisters, I think he has trived t together whatever be said in praise of them, dropping all the other side of the argument most ingeniously.
[Footnote] "Recolles Of Christs Hospital"
I remember L. at school; and well recollect that he had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town, and were near at hand; and he had the privilege of going to see them, almost as often as he wished, through some invidious distin which was deo us. The present worthy sub-treasurer to the Iemple explain how that happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in a m, while we were battening upon our quarter of a penny loaf -- our crug moistened with attenuated small beer, in wooden piggins, smag of the pitched leathern jack it oured from. Our Mondays milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and the pease soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched for him with a slice of "extra-ordinary bread and butter," from the hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesdays mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant -- (we had three banyan to four meat days in the week) was endeared to his palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of gio make it go down the mlibly) or the fragrant amon. In lieu of our half-pickled Sundays, or quite fresh boiled beef on Thursdays (strong as caro equina), with detestable marigolds floating in the pail to poison the broth -- our sty mutts on Fridays -- and rather more savoury, but grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten-roasted or rare, ouesdays (the only dish which excited our appetites, and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal proportion -- he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting griskiiknown to our palates), cooked iernal kit (a great thing), and brought him daily by his maid or aunt! I remember the good old relative (in whom love forbade pride) squatting down upon some odd stone in a by-nook of the cloisters disclosing the viands (of higher regale than those cates which the ravens ministered to the Tishbite); and the tending passions of L. at the unfolding. There was love for the bringer; shame for the thing brought, and the manner of its bringing; sympathy for those who were too many to share in it; and, at top of all, hunger (eldest, stro of the passions!) predominant, breaking dowony fences of shame, and awkwardness, and a troubling over-sciousness.
I oor friendless boy. My parents, and those who should care for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances of theirs, which they could re upon being kind to me in the great city, after a little forotice, which they had the grace to take of me on my first arrival in town, sooired of my holiday visits. They seemed to them to recur too often, though I thought them few enough; and, oer ahey all failed me, and I felt myself alone among six hundred playmates.
O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early homestead! The yearnings which I used to have towards it in those unfledged years! How, in my dreams, would my native town (far in the west) e back, with its church, and trees, and faces! How I would wake weeping, and in the anguish of my heart exclaim upo e in Wiltshire!