room in the metropolis. Here
the boys, now about 800 in number, dine; and here are held the 'Suppings
in Public,' to which visitors are admitted by tickets issued by the
Treasurer and by the Governors of Christ's Hospital. The tables are laid
with cheese in wooden bowls, beer in wooden piggins, poured from leathern
jacks, and bread brought in large baskets. The official company enter;
the Lord Mayor, or President, takes his seat in a state chair made of oak
from St. Catherine's Church, by the Tower; a hymn is sung, accompanied by
the organ; a 'Grecian,' or head boy, reads the prayers from the pulpit,
silence being enforced by three drops of a wooden hammer. After prayer
the supper commences, and the visitors walk between the tables. At its
close the 'trade-boys' take up the baskets, bowls, jacks, piggins, and
candlesticks, and pass in procession, the bowing to the Governors being
curiously formal. This spectacle was witnessed by Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert in 1845.

Among the more eminent Bluecoat boys are Joshua Barnes, editor of
Anacreon and Euripides; Jeremiah Markland, the eminent critic,
particularly in Greek Literature; Camden, the antiquary; Bishop
Stillingfleet; Samuel Richardson, the novelist; Thomas Mitchell, the
translator of Aristophanes; Thomas Barnes, many years editor of the
London Times; Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and Leigh Hunt.

No boy is admitted before he is seven years old, or after he is nine; and
no boy can remain in the school after he is fifteen, King's boys and
'Grecians' alone excepted. There are about 500 Governors, at the head of
whom are the Sovereign and the Prince of Wales. The qualification for a
Governor is payment of 500 pounds.--Ibid.

GENERAL NOTE.

One hears much about the 'hideous Blue Laws of Connecticut,' and is
accustomed to shudder piously when they are mentioned. There are people
in America--and even in England!--who imagine that they were a very
monument of malignity, pitilessness, and inhumanity; whereas in reality
they were about the first SWEEPING DEPARTURE FROM JUDICIAL ATROCITY which
the 'civilised' world had seen. This humane and kindly Blue Law Code, of
two hundred and forty years ago, stands all by itself, with ages of
bloody law on the further side of it, and a century and three-quarters of
bloody English law on THIS side of it.

There has never been a time--under the Blue Laws or any other--when above
FOURTEEN crimes were punishable by death in