to venture into a strange one, the odds against his
return would be very large. One battered old animal, to whom I used
occasionally to toss a scrap of food, always followed me from the hotel
to the cross-street at Pera, where the two soldiers stand on guard, but
would never come beyond this point. He knew the fate that awaited him
had he done so; and therefore, when I left him, he would lie down in the
road and go to sleep until I came back. When a horse or camel dies, and
is left about the roads near the city, the bones are soon picked very
clean by these dogs, and they will carry the skulls or pelves to great
distances. I was told that they will eat their dead fellows--a curious
fact, I believe, in canine economy. They are always troublesome--not to
say dangerous--at night; and are especially irritated by Europeans, whom
they will single out among a crowd of Levantines.
[From the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt.]
CHRIST-HOSPITAL WORTHIES.
Christ-Hospital is a nursery of tradesmen, of merchants, of naval
officers, of scholars; it has produced some of the greatest ornaments of
their time; and the feeling among the boys themselves is, that it is a
medium, between the patrician pretension of such schools as Eton the
Westminster, and the plebeian submission of and charity schools. In
point of University honors, it claims to be equal with the best; and
though other schools can show a greater abundance of eminent names, I
know not where many will be found who are a greater host in themselves.
One original author is worth a hundred transmitters of elegance; and
such a one is to be found in Richardson, who here received what
education he possessed. Here Camden also received the rudiments of his.
Bishop Stillingfleet, according to the memoirs of Pepys, lately
published, was brought up in the school. We have had many eminent
scholars, two of them Greek professors, to wit, Barnes, and the present
Mr. Scholefield, the latter of whom attained an extraordinary succession
of University honors. The rest are Markland; Middleton, late Bishop of
Calcutta; and Mitchell, the translator of "Aristophanes."
Christ-Hospital, I believe, toward the close of the last century, and
the beginning of the present, sent out more living writers, in its
proportion, than any other school. There was Dr. Richards, author of the
"Aboriginal Britons;" Dyer, whose life was one unbroken dream of
learning and goodness, and who used to make us wonder wi
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