this movement:

"That the scheme he was engaged upon was a good work, because it will
in some measure stop the mouths of Papists, who are prone to say, Where
are your works, and how few are your hospitals, and how small is your
charity, notwithstanding your great preaching?"

A remarkable little book, and a very fit companion for the _Silver Drops_
of William Blake, to which it bears a striking similarity, is the _Pietas
Hallensis_ of Dr. Franck. In this, the German divine relates, in a style
which bears more than an accidental resemblance to the work of the Covent
Garden Philanthropist, how, little by little, by importunity and
perseverance, he nursed his own charitable plans, of a like kind, into full
life and vigour; and both Drs. Woodward and Kennett endorse and command the
"miraculous footsteps of Divine Providence" in the labours of Dr. Franck.
"Could we," says Dr. Kennett, "trace the obscurer footsteps of our own
charity-schools, the finger of God would be as evidently in them." Why the
Bishop of Peterborough should be ignorant of these earlier efforts to the
same end in his own country, is somewhat marvellous. Franck began his
charitable work at Glaucha in 1698; while Blake was labouring to establish
his Highgate School in 1685. That Franck should know nothing about our
pioneer in charitable education, is probable enough; but that the English
divines I have mentioned, with Wodrow, Gillies, and a host of others,
should be unaware that the proceedings at Halle were only the counterpart
of those done fourteen years before by Blake in their own land, is
certainly surprising, and affords another proof of the proneness of Britons
to extol everything foreign to the neglect of what is native and at their
own doors.

Perhaps some of your readers will think I over-estimate the importance of
the question, whether the charity-school movement is of British or foreign
growth; or whether the honour of its application to the poor (for all
_charity_-schools are not for such) belongs to my subject William Blake, or
{436} some other philanthropic individual; if such there be, let them
repair to our Metropolitan Cathedral on the day of the annual assemblage of
the London charity children: and if, on contemplating the spectacle which
will there meet their eye, they do not think it an object of interest to
discover who, as Dr. Kennett says, "first cast in the _salt_ at the
fountain-head to heal the _waters_, and brok