Many are the notable men renowned in literature and art who have sprung from this famous school. Charles Lamb, S. T. Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, and countless other men might be mentioned who have done honour to their school. Some of their recollections of old manners reveal some strange educational methods--the severe thrashings, the handcuffing of runaways, the confining in dungeons, wretched holes, where the boys could just find room to lie down on straw, and were kept in solitary confinement and fed worse than prisoners in modern gaols. Bread and beer breakfasts were hardly the best diet for boys, and the meat does not always appear to have been satisfactory. However, all these bygone abuses have long ago disappeared. For some years the future of the hospital was shrouded in uncertainty. At length it was resolved to quit London, and now the old buildings have been pulled down, and the school has taken a new lease of life and settled at Horsham, where all will wish that it may have a long and prosperous career. We may well conclude this brief notice of the old school in the words of the School Commissioners of 1867, who stated: "Christ's Hospital is a thing without parallel in the country and _sui generis_. It is a grand relic of the mediæval spirit--a monument of the profuse munificence of that spirit, and of that constant stream of individual beneficence, which is so often found to flow around institutions of that character. It has kept up its main features, its traditions, its antique ceremonies, almost unchanged, for a period of upwards of three centuries. It has a long and goodly list of worthies." We know not how many of these antique ceremonies have survived its removal, but we venture to hope that they may still exist, and that the authorities have not failed to maintain the traditions that Time has consecrated.
In the pageant of London no objects are more numerous and conspicuous than the churches which greet us at every step. In spite of the large number which have disappeared, there are very many left. There they stand in the centre of important thoroughfares, in obscure courts and alleys--here surrounded by high towering warehouses; there maintaining proud positions, defying the attacks of worldly business and affairs. A whole volume would be required to do justice to the city churches, and we can only glance at some of the most striking examples.