vow and take back all
he had given. That was when, a widower of fifty-seven, he wanted to
marry a girl of twenty. She was John Donne's daughter Constance, and
perhaps Donne felt bound to ask for liberal settlements. However, the
settlements were arranged somehow, and the college was founded. The
"colledge of God's gift" was his name for it, and as its founder he
described himself as "chief master, ruler and overseer of all and
singular over games of beares, bulls, mastive doggs and mastive
bitches." His blood-relations were to be Master and Warden, if possible,
and so, for many years, they were.

One of the statutes explains the name "God's gift." There were to be
twelve poor scholars, chosen partly by merit and partly by chance. When
a place became vacant three or four children were to be elected by the
parish vestries, and of these two were to be chosen by the Master and
Warden, and then the two were to draw lots:--

"The manner of drawinge of the said lot shall be thus: Two equal
small rowleses of paper to be indifferently made and rolled up, in
one of which rolls the wordes 'Godd's Guift' are to be written, and
the other rowle is to be left blank and so put into a boxe; which
boxe shalbe thrice shaken up and downe, and the elder person of
those two that are elected to drawe the first lot, and the younger
person the second; and whiche of them draweth the lott wherein the
wordes 'God's Guift' are written shalbe forthwith admitted."

Another gift followed Allen's. When Sir Francis Bourgeois died early in
the last century he left his fine collection of pictures to the school.
The gallery is open to the public; but a description, in the space I
have here, could be no more than a list of names.

Dulwich still has some of its fields and buttercups; the playing fields
are a pleasant oasis which is the last vision of sunlight and grass for
the traveller on the Chatham and Dover railway before plunging into the
murk of the Penge tunnel. Of its neighbours to the west, Streatham
clusters about a tangle of railways; Streatham, which was deep country
for Dr. Johnson, knocked down, in 1863, the house and cut up the park
that Dr. Johnson knew when they belonged to the Thrales. He would not
recognise the church--the church to which he bade farewell with a
kiss--it has been rebuilt. The library, which, if it were standing
to-day with the books that Johnson read, would be the most sought for
room in