this curtain, was saved from one of Busby's terrible floggings by his
school-mate assuming the fault, and bearing the rod in his place. This
brave lad in the civil war took the King's side, became implicated in a
futile rising, and was condemned to death at Exeter. But his judge
happened to be the very boy whose place he had taken under Busby's rod,
and he was not unmindful of the favor, for he hastened to London, and
begged from Cromwell his friend's life. If you will get No. 313 of the
_Spectator_, you can read the whole story, and it is a very beautiful as
well as truthful one.

[Illustration: THE SCHOOL-ROOM.]

The school-room at Westminster is one of the most interesting rooms in
the world. It was the dormitory of the old monks; and when I saw it,
thirty years ago, its walls were quite covered with the names of boys
who had studied there, and who had cut with their penknives these rude
autographs. Many of the names have since become famous all over the
world, and will never be forgotten. At that time "John Dryden" was deep
and plain in the solid bench where he cut it, for not one of all the
thousands of Westminster boys who have sat in his place since have been
mean or thoughtless enough to deface it.

The dormitory of the Queen's Scholars stands where the granary of the
monks stood, and is a chamber one hundred and sixty-one feet long by
twenty-five broad. It is interesting because it is the theatre where for
centuries the "Westminster Play" has been acted. This "play" was
expressly ordered by Queen Elizabeth for "her boys," and those of
Terence were chosen by her. In 1847 there was a movement to abolish the
"Westminster Play," but a memorial, signed by more than six hundred old
Westminsters, pleaded for its continuance, and it is still one of the
great features of a London Christmas.

Westminster is pre-eminently a classical school, but no school has a
longer or more splendid list of great scholars. Of Church dignitaries it
counts nine Archbishops and more than sixty Bishops: among the latter
Trelawney, Francis Atterbury (the friend of Pope, Swift, and Gay), Isaac
Barrow, and the witty, loyal Dr. South, who, when but an Upper Boy at
Westminster, dared to read the prayer for Charles the First an hour
before he was beheaded. Still more famous was Prideaux, the great
Oriental and Hebrew scholar, and the wise Dr. Goodenough, whose sermons
before the House of Lords elicited the lively epigram from some
Westminste