es
is feasible. "Some of them," says the sanguine Blake, "have scarce faith
enough to believe in the success of this great and good design. Nay, your
brother Cornish himself," continues he, in addressing one of his ladies,
although full of good works, "would have persuaded me to lay it down" upon
the ground of its impracticability. The language of Blake is everywhere
advocating this "_new_ way of charity." "If it be _new_," says he to an
objector, "the more's the pity;" and, with reference to the possibility of
failure, he would thus shame them into liberality. Speaking of his "fine,
handsome, and well cloathed boys; not too fine, because they are the
ladies'!" our enthusiast adds to this _soft sawdur_:

"But now, if a year or two hence they should be grown, which God
forbid! poor ragged, half-starved, and no cloaths, country folks would
say, who ride or go that way, Were there not good ladies enough in and
about London to maintain _one_ little school?"

Here then is _prima facie_ evidence, I think, that my subject, poor crazy
William Blake, was the originator of one of the greatest social
improvements of modern times.

The charity-school movement had obtained a strong hold upon the public mind
early in the past century; but although I have sought for the name of Blake
through many books professing to give an account of the early history of
such institutions, I have not yet met with the slightest allusion to him,
his school, or his _Silver Drops_.

The superficial inquirer into the history of English charity-schools will
be told that the honour of the first erecting such, and caring for
destitute children, is popularly considered due to the parishes of St.
Botulph, Aldgate, and St. Margaret's, Westminster: and if he would farther
satisfy himself upon that point, he will see it claimed by the first named;
a slab in front of their schools, adjoining the Royal Mint, bearing an
inscription to the purport that it was the first Protestant charity-school,
erected by voluntary contributions in 1693.

If it comes to the earliest London school for poor children, perhaps the
Catholics take the lead; for we find that it was part of the tactics of the
Jesuits, in the reign of James II., to promote their design of subverting
the Protestant religion by infusing their Romish tenets into the minds of
the children of the poor by providing schools for them in the Savoy and
Westminster.

Blake says, with reference to