scholars and officers on the third of October,
1614.

Before this time, at the third meeting of
the governors, held on the tenth of December,
1613, it had been settled that the decayed
gentlemen who were to be consoled in their
old age within the walls of the Charterhouse,
under the name of " Poor Brothers," were to be
eighty in number. It was resolved, also, that
in accordance with the disposition of the
founder, they were " to be ancient gentlemen,
having the same tender breeding with their
elder brothers, but only the slender fortunes
of a younger brother — gentlemen too generous
to beg, and not made for work (whose
ingenuous natures might be most sensible of
want, and least able to relieve it), and who
would be cast away and brought to misery for
want of a comfortable subsistence in their old
age." At this meeting it was therefore decided,
that no rogues or beggars should be eligible
for admission but that " these ancient
gentlemen were to comprise such as had been
servants to the king's majesty, either decrepid
or old, captains either at sea or land, soldiers
maimed or impotent, decayed merchants, men
fallen into decay through shipwreck, casualty
of fire or such evil accident." The
definition of the purpose of the founder was
probably suggested by a passage in one of Bacon's
letters to the king, in which he says: " The
next consideration may be, whether this
intended hospital, as it hath a greater endowment
than other hospitals have, should not likewise
work upon a better subject than other
poor, as that it should be converted to the relief
of maimed soldiers, decayed merchants, house-
holders aged and desolate, churchmen, and
the like, whose condition being of a better
sort than loose people and beggars, deserveth
both a more liberal stipend and allowance,
and some proper place of relief not inter-
mingled or coupled with the basest sort of
poor."

It was designed, then, by the founder
himself, and declared by his trustees, that the
Poor Brother of the Charterhouse should be
chosen from a rank, and elected to a position,
higher than the meanest. He was to be
gentleman as to his antecedents. Misfortune was
to qualify him for election into what might be
called a fellowship on Sutton's munificent
foundation, over which officers were set,
entrusted with the care of shielding him in his
old age from all painful reminder of his
changed position. He was to have, as the
funds well allowed, a shelter from the world,
in which he could retain many of the comforts
of his old position, unoppressed by any sense
of beggar-like dependence. The foundation
was not established for the express purpose of
supplying handsome incomes to a staff of
officers, but for the consolation of decayed
gentlemen in their last years, over whose
wants certain officials were to be well paid
for exercising delicate and tender care. The
act of parliament, obtained 1628-9, in the
third year of Charles the First, to secure the
privileges of the foundation, requires, " That
all the members of the intended hospital shall
be provided " (not " in a good and sufficient"
but) " in a very ample manner with all things."
And so Hearne in his doggrel writes of it in
1677:—

        " Plenty here has chose her seat,
          Here all things needful and convenient meet;
          Every week are hither sent
          Inhabitants o' the wat'ry element."

Hearne evidently looked upon fish dinners as
a special luxury:—

        " Fourscore patriarchs here
          Wander many a year,
          Until they move unto the promised land."

Fourscore patriarchs here wander still; and
to see how they wander, and to ascertain what
great improvements have strengthened this
foundation, since the old world has increased in
wisdom, and the old property of La Chartreuse,
outside Smithfield Bars, near London, has
increased in worth, we have lately been
paying a few visits to the Charterhouse.

It was provided by the founder, that if the
funds devoted to their use increased, these
were to be applied either to an increase in the
scale of comfort upon which the Brethren were
maintained, or to an increase in the number
of the Brethren, as might seem most fit. The
funds have increased very largely; and as
there are still but eighty Brothers, there is
reason to expect that the old gentlemen are
in the enjoyment of extremely comfortable
little fellowships.

Out of the quiet of Charterhouse Square,
we pass under an archway, by a porter's
lodge, into the still greater quiet of the
Charterhouse. Scattered buildings, many old
monastic walls, a sort of lane leading to a
silent square with a bit of green and a
large pump; a chapel, a hall; an archway,
other squares, cloisters, modern buildings
like dull piles of law chambers constructed to
match Pump Court in the Temple, a handsome
modern house, an archway; a graveyard like
a meadow, a boy's playground; monkish
time-eaten cloisters, where monks spent an
agony before death in the old grim days of
persecution; then back, in some odd way, to
the pump, or under an archway to the kitchen,
or the chapel, or some other unexpected place
—all this belongs to the confused image left
upon the mind, by a first ramble over the
acres covered by the Charterhouse, and
shut out from the noise and tumult of the
city. On a sunny afternoon, one may see the
milkman talking to a maid servant at the
door of the schoolmaster's handsome modern
residence; or an old man in a livery-gown
sunning himself, as he crawls up and down
with a long pipe between his lips. Except
the playground and the school, which do not
form part of our present thoughts, nothing
conveys to the mind light associations. Our