ing the stock which is imperiously demanded to furnish the
more pressing and homely wants of our nature, he has disposed of one
or more perhaps out of a numerous offspring, under the shelter of a
care scarce less tender than the paternal, where not only their
bodily cravings shall be supplied, but that mental _pabulum_ is also
dispensed, which HE hath declared to be no less necessary to our
sustenance, who said, that, "not by bread alone man can live": for
this Christ's Hospital unfolds her bounty. Here neither, on the one
hand, are the youth lifted up above their family, which we must
suppose liberal, though reduced; nor on the other hand, are they
liable to be depressed below its level by the mean habits and
sentiments which a common charity-school generates. It is, in a word,
an Institution to keep those who have yet held up their heads in the
world, from sinking; to keep alive the spirit of a decent household,
when poverty was in danger of crushing it; to assist those who are
the most willing, but not always the most able, to assist themselves;
to separate a child from his family for a season, in order to render
him back hereafter, with feelings and habits more congenial to it,
than he could even have attained by remaining at home in the bosom of
it. It is a preserving and renovating principle, an antidote for the
_res angusta domi_, when it presses, as it always does, most heavily
upon the most ingenuous natures.

This is Christ's Hospital; and whether its character would be
improved by confining its advantages to the very lowest of the
people, let those judge who have witnessed the looks, the gestures,
the behavior, the manner of their play with one another, their
deportment towards strangers, the whole aspect and physiognomy of
that vast assemblage of boys on the London foundation, who freshen
and make alive again with their sports the else mouldering cloisters
of the old Grey Friars--which strangers who have never witnessed, if
they pass through Newgate Street, or by Smithfield, would do well to
go a little out of their way to see.

For the Christ's Hospital boy feels that he is no charity-boy; he
feels it in the antiquity and regality of the foundation to which he
belongs; in the usage which he meets with at school, and the
treatment he is accustomed to out of its bounds; in the respect and
even kindness, which his well-known garb never fails to procure him
in the streets of the metropolis; he feels it in his