th passing
through the school-room (where no other person in "town-clothes" ever
appeared) to consult books in the library; Le Grice, the translator of
"Longus;" Horne, author of some well-known productions in controversial
divinity; Surr, the novelist (not in the Grammar school); James White,
the friend of Charles Lamb, and not unworthy of him, author of
"Falstaff's Letters" (this was he who used to give an anniversary dinner
to the chimney-sweepers, merrier than, though not so magnificent as Mrs.
Montague's); Pitman, a celebrated preacher, editor of some school-books,
and religious classics; Mitchell, before mentioned; myself, who stood
next him; Barnes, who came next, the editor of the "Times," than whom no
man (if he had cared for it) could have been more certain of obtaining
celebrity for wit and literature; Townsend, a prebendary of Durham,
author of "Armageddon," and several theological works; Gilly, another of
the Durham prebendaries, who wrote the "Narrative of the Waldenses;"
Seargill, a Unitarian minister, author of some tracts on Peace and War,
&c.; and lastly, whom I have kept by way of climax, Coleridge and
Charles Lamb, two of the most original geniuses, not only of the day,
but of the country. We have had an embassador among us; but as he, I
understand, is ashamed of us, we are hereby more ashamed of him, and
accordingly omit him.

Coleridge I never saw till he was old. Lamb I recollect coming to see
the boys, with a pensive, brown, handsome, and kindly face, and a gait
advancing with a motion from side to side, between involuntary
consciousness and attempted ease. His brown complexion may have been
owing to a visit in the country; his air of uneasiness to a great burden
of sorrow. He dressed with a quaker-like plainness. I did not know him
as Lamb: I took him for a Mr. "Guy," having heard somebody address him
by that appellative, I suppose in jest.

Every upper boy at school appears a giant to a little one. "Big boy" and
senior are synonymous. Now and then, however, extreme smallness in a
senior scholar gives a new kind of dignity, by reason of the testimony
it bears to the ascendency of the intellect. It was the custom for the
monitors at Christ-Hospital, during prayers before meat, to stand
fronting the tenants of their respective wards, while the objects of
their attention were kneeling. Looking up, on one of these occasions,
toward a new monitor who was thus standing, and whose face was unknown
to