Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/323

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NOTES BY THE WAY.

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��The grants made by the Corporation for educational purposes Educational from 1781 to 1905 include 361 ,000?. to the City of London School. Grants. This school can now boast of having produced a Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith. Two Chancellors of the Exchequer also received their first education there. We old boys, from our back seats, naturally feel proud that our school should be so distinguished. Grants amounting to 11,000?. have also been made to the City of London School for Girls. Over 24,000?. has been devoted to technical education. On musical education, including the new building on the Embankment, 121,0002. has been expended ; and in addition the Royal College of Music has received 5,000?.

The grants to charitable purposes are allotted, as they should Other be, in a thoroughly catholic spirit, quite irrespective of creed. Grants. Among the amounts devoted to public purposes were 27,000?. in connexion with the reduction of the price of gas, and 6,255?. similarly for water. Other sums include Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, 5,000?. ; a donation to the Imperial Institute, and contributions to the Victoria Memorial Fund ; King Edward VII. 's Coronation gift, 5,OOOZ. ; the necklace presented to Princess Alexandra, 10,000?.; the City of London Imperial Volunteer Fund for the equipment of a volunteer battalion and its transport to South Africa, 25,000?. ; and International Health Exhibition, 5,000?. Earlier amounts include monuments to Chatham, 1780-83, 3,241?. ; Pitt, 1807-13, 4,078?. ; Nelson, 1807-11, 4,442?. ; and Wellington, 5,000?. The total sum expended for charitable purposes amounts to 1,198,282?., and for public purposes 203,441?. These sums are entirely apart from the expenditure on improvements and public works.

One grant made by the Corporation in 1874 caused some fault- 1907, Aug. 21. finding, not among the donors, but among the receivers. The city members of the Congregational Church meeting in the Poultry Temple determined to sell the site of their old chapel, known as Poultry Pulpit. Chapel, and obtained for it fifty thousand pounds. Half of this amount was devoted to the purchase from the Corporation of the site on the Holborn Viaduct upon which the City Temple now stands, and the Corporation, to show their goodwill, voted the sum of three hundred guineas in order that the pulpit might be a present from the City. This handsome gift came as a pleasant surprise to the then minister, Dr. Parker, who first saw an intima- tion of it in the newspapers. Strange to say, no sooner did this kindly act become known than a regular storm was raised, and many Nonconformists solemnly asserted " that to accept money from a corporation was a violation of the fundamental principles of Nonconformity, and a denial of the spirituality of the Kingdom of Heaven." The controversy in the denominational papers lasted for weeks, and an uninformed reader would " have been led to believe that the entire fabric of the Christian Church was in

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