wonder it was, to be sure, that we were not all drowned under Blackfriars’ Bridge. The number of boys at Saint Paul’s School was fixed by the founder at 153, in allusion to the miraculous draught of fishes taken by Saint Peter. The school is exceedingly rich, and the scholars as I have before mentioned have constantly attained high honours at the University of Cambridge. Amongst our most eminent Paulines may be mentioned, Sir Anthony Denny; Leland, the antiquary; Milton, Samuel Pepys, Strype, Doctor Calamy; the great Duke of Marlborough, Elliston, the late Lord Truro, and many other English worthies of great repute.
Had I been free to choose that one amongst the London schools at which I should have wished to be educated, I think my choice would have fallen on the Charter House. I am speaking as a man, and my judgment only rests upon the external features of the place. Although, even with regard to the Charter House, I think it would be far better for the pupils, and far more for the ultimate advantage of the school, if it were removed into the country. I am bound to say that it has about it more air, more space, more light, than any other of the metropolitan schools. Westminster is not half as good in these respects—however great in the veneration which attaches to that noble old school, and to the adjacent abbey. But as you stroll along the elevated terrace which lies on the roof of the long cloisters in the Charter House grounds, and are looking over that fair expanse of green sward below, you cannot but see that it is a place in which boys might be reasonably happy. There is a great stillness, too, which is strange in the heart of London. Moreover, as I am informed, the school and grounds are in the healthiest part of the metropolis. I think it would be better for the boys if they had green lanes, and cheerful uplands where they might take their pastime; still, if we are to have a London school at all, give me the Charter House.
As I had not the advantage of being a Carthusian myself, I visited the place in company with a friend who had not been there for some thirty years or so, when he was a schoolboy there himself. I saw the place through his spectacles; but before I make further mention of our pleasant stroll, I would say that some five centuries ago, Sir Walter de Manny took the land on which the Charter House and its dependencies is situated, and assigned it as a burial place for the poor destroyed by the plague of 1349. About twenty years later a monastery of Carthusians was erected upon the spot; and in this monastery, subsequently, Sir Thomas More lived for four years of his life, giving himself up to devotion and prayer. When King Henry VIII. took the various monasteries and religious houses of the country in hand, he seems to have dealt with the superiors of the Charter House, and notably with the Prior, in a very masterful manner indeed: John Howghton, the last Prior, did not fall with sufficient readiness into the ideas of the Royal Rcasoner with regard to the King’s supremacy; and so, by way of bringing the argument to a satisfactory conclusion, Henry caused him to be decapitated at Tyburn, and ordered that his head should be stuck up on London Bridge, and his body be placed over the gate of the Charter House itself, all of which was done. Thus, the Charter House was first a burial-ground, and then a monastery for three centuries. For the next seventy years or so it passed through many hands, and seems to have been rather devoted to purposes of entertainment and hospitality than to any other use. Queen Elizabeth stayed there many days; King James I. kept his court there; and so forth. But in the reign of this very King James, and in the year of Grace 1611, the property passed into the hands of Robert Sutton, a wealthy London merchant, who has made the place what it is, and left fair memory of himself to all time.
The founder of the Charter House had two objects in view when he devoted his wealth to the benefit of generations to come. Besides the school, upon the foundation are maintained eighty pensioners, who live together in collegiate style. Each pensioner has a large and comfortable room to his separate use. They dine together in a common hall, which is a very beautiful room, much like the halls of the smaller colleges at Cambridge, but with far braver sculpture and fretwork than I remember to have seen in any of them. They have all necessaries found them—except dress—and they are allowed 14l. a-year each in lieu of this, and with it purchase their own apparel. Then there is the school, and on the foundation are forty-four scholars, who are supported free of all expense, and there are various exhibitions at the University for their benefit. The bulk of the scholars are boarders and day-boys—that is, those who board at the houses of the masters, and those who only come for instruction in the day time, and return to their own homes at night. The number of scholars at the Charter House has sadly fallen off of late years. Thirty years back they were 500 or 600 in number, now they count, I think, less than 200. This again is a result of keeping the school in town. Parents will send their children to Harrow or Rugby, instead of to a school which is in the heart of London, for all its three acres of playing-green, its garden, and its trees.
Many changes had taken place in the old grounds within the last thirty years. The one which seemed to grieve my friend most, although he is especially a man of peaceful disposition, was the disappearance—I use the word advisedly—of the old fighting-ground. A church now stands where the old Carthusians used to pummel each other’s heads. “Look there!” said Jones—we will call him Jones—“that was the place,” and added with a withering sneer, “and now see what they have done with it; upon my life, it’s too bad!” The school-house stands in the middle of the green. The principal room is of considerable size, and appeared to be well ventilated, which is the main point. There are huge maps round the walls—a good idea, for, in spite of his best efforts to the contrary, a boy must obtain some correct notions of geography when he sees a map before him every time he raises his eyes. The head-master takes his forms in hand in a smaller room which opens out of the large school-room. The most interesting object in this place