THOUGH the local position of this institution is too well known to render it necessary for us to adopt the method of many worthy topographers, and describe it by its boundaries and parochial relations, one may easily imagine the difficulty those who should know it best-the founders of the hospital-would experience in finding it were they now alive. In that extensive wilderness of houses, how should they expect to discover the building they left almost surrounded by fields? Who would think of coming here to seek for a place enjoying at once the advantages of a country residence, and that of being near to all the metropolitan conveniences, as was the case with the Foundling Hospital much less than a century ago? And in looking on street after street of lofty and noble houses, which have for ever banished the daisies and buttercups and the sweetsmelling hay of the summer time from the place, still more astonished would they be to learn how great a number of them belonged to the Hospital itself; a striking evidence of the prosperity of their beloved charity.

The gates are flung wide open, and on foot and in luxuriant vehicles a quiet, but brilliant-looking stream of persons are passing through them into the very spacious area in front of the edifice. The hum of industry in the solitary shop

of the Hospital to the right, where some of the boys are instructed in the mysteries of the tailor, is mute; the play-grounds on either side, with their arcades and alcoves and gymnastic implements, are all deserted; nothing is to be seen or heard but the continued passage across the centre of the area of the visitors to the famous chapel, which occupies the central of the three sides of a square of large but plain brick buildings constituting the Hospital. In the corner to the right we find a small vestibule or hall, leading by a passage from its farther end into the chapel, and directly into the kitchen-garden of the establishment. At its entrance stands a governor, receiving the slight donation which is expected from visitors. This hall, to many, has a kind of melancholy interest. The walls are decorated with funereal memorials of different persons who have been buried in the chapel vaults. Among the rest we read the names of Sir Stephen Gaselee, and beneath a handsome marble bust placed between pillars, and over a sarcophagus, an inscription to the late Lord Tenterden. The privilege of burial here is now confined to governors of the Hospital and its officers, with their families, who generally pay a handsome fee. Children who die in the Hospital are buried in the churchyard of St. Pancras. Passing on into the chapel, we enter upon a noticeable scene. The building in itself is large, light, and generally elegant in its appearance; the stained glass here and there sheds its rich glories; the altar-piece, with its most touching and beautiful of subjects, Christ blessing children, and treated in the artist's (West) best manner, is at once appropriate and impressive; but it is not on these features the eye of the spectator rests, much less on the mingled crowd of the pious, the wealthy, and the fashionable, which occupies the gallery over the altar-piece at this end, as well as the two side galleries and the body of the chapel: it is that long slope of youthful and interesting faces descending from the ceiling to the front of the gallery at the other extremity of the building, the boys in their dark costume on the right, the girls in snowiest vesture on the left, with the noble organ rising between them; it is they who are the "cynosure of neighbouring eyes "-it is in that gallery centre the attractions which make the Foundling Hospital Chapel one of the most popular of London places of worship. As the service proceeds, and the hymns and choruses are sung by the children and the professional choir—as the anthem, one of Handel's most glorious works, is raised in solemn chorus or touching melody, we no longer wonder at the popularity to which we have alluded; such singing and such music would draw audiences-and not necessarily undevout ones-anywhere, much more to an institution which has so many other interesting features to attract curiosity. That organ, so magnificent in tone and power, was the gift of Handel, not in its form as we now see it, for the original instrument has been greatly enlarged and altered, but there are the actual materials possessing the peculiar quality which we attach to the humblest article that has been touched by a man of lofty genius; and so the present organ is essentially the very instrument before which the wonderful musician himself sat, and from which he drew forth the notes in which the sublime strains of the Messiah here found voice: year after year in this chapel did Handel fill the coffers of the Hospital by the gratuitous performance of that, his greatest work. All the other benefactors of the Hospital sink into comparative insignificance in regard to the amount of actual pecuniary benefit

they were the means of conferring above ten thousand pounds were in all added by the Messiah' to the funds. A curious misunderstanding occurred between Handel and the governors. He " presented the charity with a fair copy of the original score of the Messiah.' This act of bounty was so ill understood by some of the governors, that, imagining this deed gave them an exclusive right to its performance, they formed the singular resolution of applying to Parliament to legalise their claim. But, first of all, it was deemed necessary to obtain Handel's concurrence; and accordingly a deputation of these gentlemen waited upon him with their strange, though well-meant, requisition. But the musician, bursting into a rage which the music he has put in the mouth of Polypheme would but faintly express, exclaimed, Te deivel! For vat sal de Foundling put mein oratorio in de Parlement? Te deivel! Mein music sal not go to de Parlement.'"* The advantages conferred on the Hospital by the musical performances thus commenced by Handel were, in a measure, made permanent through an accidental circumstance highly honourable to the thoughtful humanity of the governors. In the minutes of the institution we read that in a general committee, held on the 20th of March, 1758, it was "resolved that Tom Grenville, a boy of this Hospital, born blind, be taught music by the assistant to the organist of the chapel," and "at the price of two guineas per quarter." Two or three other blind children were similarly treated, who, it is pleasant to relate, lived to "contribute very abundantly" to the Hospital funds through that circumstance. Attention was now attracted to the subject of teaching music to the children generally, and the result was the admirable chorus, which, in conjunction with some half-dozen professional voices, has, down to the present day, contributed greatly to the prosperity of the institution. About a thousand a-year is now collected at the chapel-doors, and at the annual sermon, over and above the expense of the professional assistance alluded to.

As we leave the chapel on the conclusion of the service, we perceive that the musical performances, though the chief, are by no means the only attraction of the visitors to the Foundling. Mingling with the throng which at the outer extremity of the hall passes through a door on the left along a passage, we find ourselves in the girls' dining-room, an apartment of great length, hung round with pictures of no ordinary merit. Here is Hogarth's well-known and capital portrait of Captain Coram, the founder of the institution, of whom we shall presently have to speak. This is the picture to which Hogarth refers in the following passage of his autobiographical sketch, where he is alluding to his dispute with Ramsay, the eminent painter, as to the qualifications required for portrait-painting. He says, "The portrait which I painted with most pleasure, and in which I particularly wished to excel, was that of Captain Coram, for the Foundling Hospital; and if I am so wretched an artist as my enemies assert, it is somewhat strange that this, which was one of the first and painted the size of life, should stand the test of twenty years' competition, and be generally thought the best portrait in the place, notwithstanding the first painters in the kingdom exerted all their talents to vie with it." This may not sound very modest, but it is quite true; although at the same time among the other por

* Burney's History of Music.'

traits in this very room, and which are among the works Hogarth refers to, are Dr. Mead's by Ramsay, the Earl of Dartmouth's by Sir Joshua Reynolds, besides others by Hudson (Reynolds's master) and Shackleton. Sir Joshua's picture, we may observe by the way, is a melancholy example of those experiments in colouring to which the great painter was addicted. The face is of a cadaverous hue, and the drapery sadly blistered. But the general attention is now withdrawn from the walls. The girls enter, and take their stand each in her proper place against the long row of tables that extends from end to end of the room, the crowd forming a lane on either side. A moment's pause, and a sweet voice is heard saying grace; the utterer is that modest-looking girl in the centre of the table, who from her superior height and appearance seems chosen as one of the oldest among her companions. Scarcely has she finished before another girl, at the end of the table, dispenses, with the ease and rapidity of habit, from the large dishes of baked meat and vegetables before her, the dinners of the expectant children, plate following plate with marvellous rapidity till all are satisfied. This room occupies a great portion of the easternmost wing or side of the edifice: the boys' dining-room is in a similar situation, though more contracted in its dimensions, in the opposite wing. Following in the wake of the busy gazers across the court-yard, towards the apartment in question, through the school-room, we are arrested in the latter by the sight of the performance of a kind of preliminary to the act of dining, which, though somewhat tantalizing, no doubt adds fresh zest to the sharp appetite when it does get to work. Arranged in a double row,

"Fine by degrees and beautifully less,"

till the little fellows at the end near which we are standing seem so young and short (though fat enough) that we could fancy them but just taken from the nurse's arms, and breeched, waistcoated, and coated for the occasion, are the whole of the male portion of the youthful community, going through their drill exercises at the word of command of their master. They change at once, and without blunder, or hesitation, or want of concert, from a two-deep to a three-deep line, they beat time, they march, turn and turn again, until the welcome word is given for the final march to dinner-table in the adjoining room, where the sound of the regular, even tramp of their footsteps soon ceases. We need not follow them, as there is nothing materially different in the economy of their table from that of the girls previously noticed. The public promenade through the Hospital is not yet exhausted. There are the long wards with their rows of clean and comfortable little beds, and baskets at the foot of each, and there is the pleasureground into which the windows of some of the chief apartments open.

The two most interesting apartments of the Hospital are those devoted respectively to the use of the secretary and to the meetings of the committee or executive of the institution, and which very properly are not shown on the sabbath. The object of the governors in throwing open the other portions of the edifice described is, we presume, to enable the public constantly to judge of the treatment and condition of the children; an excellent reason, but which, of course, does not apply to the apartments above mentioned. These are in the western wing. In the secretary's room are Elisha raising the Child,' an immense sea-piece by Brooking, painted within the walls, landscapes and por

traits; but the gem of the place, and indeed of the entire collection, is Hogarth's 'March to Finchley.' The history of this work is curious. Among his other benefactions to the Hospital, Hogarth gave a number of unsold tickets connected with the disposal of the March to Finchley' by lottery; one of these tickets obtained the prize.

6

In a recent paper on the Royal Academy we had occasion to observe that the first idea of a public exhibition of works of art was borrowed from the Foundling Hospital. So many and such eminent artists contributed to adorn the home of the newly-founded charity, that the place became one of the most fashionable of morning lounges. The committee-room, into which we now enter, was of course a chief point of attraction; and its walls show very strikingly the generous strife which had prevailed in its decoration. The beautiful stucco ceiling, the marble chimney-piece, the verd antique table, with its magnificently carved support, and the glass above it, are respectively the gifts of different artists. Rysbrack gave the beautiful piece of sculpture over the mantel-piece; Hogarth, Hayman, Wills, and Highmore, contributed the four great pictures which occupy so large a portion of the walls; whilst Wilson, Gainsborough, and others of humbler name, filled the eight small round compartments scattered between the more pretending works, representing different metropolitan hospitals. Of the four large pictures, Highmore's represents the Angel of the Lord and Ishmael;' Wills's, Christ showing a Child as the emblem of Heaven;' Hayman's, the 'Finding of Moses;' and Hogarth's, the Adoption of Moses by Pharaoh's Daughter.' Mr. Cunningham speaks of the "serene and simple dignity" of this fine work by Hogarth; and another critic (Ireland) justly observes, "There is not perhaps in Holy Writ another story so exactly suitable to the avowed purpose of the foundation." The scene, with its distant pyramids, is splendid, the composition harmonious, and the principal figure (Pharaoh's daughter) exquisitely beautiful. It seems to us that, on looking at such pictures as this and the portrait of Coram, Hogarth has done much, after all, to defend his claim to be a painter, in the painter's own lofty sense of the term. What he wanted was chiefly that which arduous study could have given him. Fortunately there is little room for regret his admirable picture-morals are worth a thousand of the works of many of those who, whilst denying his right to call himself an artist, hid, under showy conventionalities and high-sounding names, the intrinsic hollowness of their own productions. It will be seen from what we have stated that the Hospital may pride itself upon the possession of some fine works of art. To these have been recently added a most valuable acquisition—a Cartoon by Raphael— which is now in the possession of the Royal Academy, having been lent to that institution, and which we have not therefore enjoyed the pleasure of seeing.

In the room thus decorated by the hand of genius the committee sits every Wednesday that determines all applications for admission-a most delicate and important duty, and one that is so bound up with the peculiar history of the institution that we can have no better opportunity of relating its rise and progress than the present.

Addison, in one of his periodical essays in the Guardian' (No. 105), says, “I will mention a piece of charity which has not yet been exerted among us, and which deserves our attention the more because it is practised by most of the