THE DAYS OF LAMB AND COLERIDGE. CHAPTER I. A GRAY DAWN. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: And cometh from afar : Not in entire forgetfulness, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,- The Youth, who daily farther from the east Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, WORDSWORTH. THE London of 1780 was not the present thronged, gigantic city whose streets seem wellnigh limitless, and which has incorporated all the suburban towns of the last century. It was not blazing with gas and electric lights, and pulsating with the tramways connecting the farthest limit with the throbbing heart of the great metropolis, so much of whose busy thought and life now vibrate through its telegraph and telephone nerves. Still, it was a mighty city for those days. Fashion thronged through Bloomsbury and Piccadilly; and misery abode in Whitechapel, just as to-day. Holborn and the Strand teemed with people hastening to the Exchange and the Bank, as now. The stately dome of new St. Paul's rose majestically above the surging streams of life coursing through these marts, and sent its vibrant tones across to the Mansion House. Westminster Abbey looked down upon St. Margaret's and St. Martin's in the Fields, and near it stood the old Parliament buildings. But the superb gothic Westminster Palace, with its many towers and myriad windows, has risen since those days, as have the National Gallery, the Nelson Monument, and the lions of Trafalgar Square, and the palatial hotels flanking the square. Quaint inns like the old "Staple Inn," and the "White Horse Cellar," and the "Three Feathers" were the centers of life, and, during the day, the busy coaches for the suburbs and provinces in the North, South, East, and West of England, bustled into the courtyards under the great gateway with outriders and merry horns, deposited their tired occupants and luggage, changed horses, and dashed off again with a fresh supply of passengers and mail-bags. Beyond the old Staple Inn of Holborn and past Newgate Prison there still stands, behind an iron paling, a quaint gray-stone building with gothic win 66 dows and a great doorway. By this main entrance one passes through a churchyard, with low slabs and a few box- graves, into the court. Had you in the year mentioned above-walked under the arched gateway, and across the cloisters into the quadrangle, you would have seen about you the dingy walls of the Christ's Hospital, or "Blue-coat School." Amid the furious din of several hundred wrestling, shrieking, racing boys, kicking their footballs along the cloisters, and playing leap-frog on the flags," far off in a sunny corner crouched a couple of little fellows of eight and eleven years. The poor little lads are young enough to need home shelter, and tender enough for a mother's watchful care, but their black pates are pressed together over a book, and they have forgotten home, mother, and the uproar around them, so absorbed are they in their treasure. Suddenly a football sends their book sprawling upon the flags. The younger boy springs like a cat upon the foremost of a group, who are jeering at the result of the well-directed aim. "Go it! Cholley!" "Hit 'im again!" and similar cries greet the well-aimed clawings of the little blackheaded imp, who has landed on the shoulders of the aggressor. In a moment the two are rolling over and over, entangled in the long skirts of their blue coats. Meanwhile, the older of the two friends has collected the scattered leaves of the beloved book, and is looking with sorrowful gray eyes upon the scuffle. "Why don't you pitch in, Esteecee? you're always afraid of your skin!" "Mollycod!" called out several interested by-standers. |