he one GREAT HOPE had not been most
mercifully planted early in their hearts and minds?

It was with melancholy pleasure that, during the past summer, our
Pilgrimage was made to the places connected with the boy's memory, in
Bristol; first to Colston's school, in which he was educated;[1] next to
the dull district in which he was either born or passed his boyhood;
then to the Institution, where his "Will," a mad document, and other
memoranda connected with his memory, are preserved with a degree of
care, that seems--or is--a mockery, when contrasted with the worse than
indifference of the city to all that concerned him when alive; next to
the house of Master Canynge, and next to the monument (Redcliffe Church)
with which his name will be associated as long as one of its stones
remains upon another; chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancies
through its long-drawn aisles; pondering sadly in the muniment-room,
where the cofres that suggested the forgeries, still lie rotting; and
gazing with mingled sorrow and surprise on the "Cenotaph to Chatterton,"
which now, taken to pieces, occupies the corner of a damp vault--

"A solemn cenotaph to thee,
Sweet Harper of time-shrouded minstrelsy!"

Ah! such books as we have been reading, and such memories as we have
been recalling, are, after all, unprofitable--a darkness without light.
We closed our eyes upon the world, which, in our momentary bitterness,
we likened to one great charnel-house, entombing all things glorious and
bright. We walked to the window; the rain was descending in
torrents--pour, pour; pattens clattered in the areas, and a solitary
postman made the street echo with his impatient knocks. A poor
organ-boy, whom we have long known, was moving, rather than walking, in
the centre; his hat flapped over his eyes by the rain, yet still he
turned the handle, and the damp music crawled forth: he paused opposite
our door, turned up the leaf of his hat, and looked upward; we missed
the family of white mice which usually crawled on the top of his organ:
poor child, he had sheltered them in his bosom; it was nothing more than
natural that he should do so, and the act was commonplace enough--but it
pleased us--it diminished our gloom. And we thought, if the great ones
of the land would but foster the talent that needs, and deserves,
protection from the storms of life, as that lonely boy sheltered the
creatures intrusted to his care, the world would be all the bette