of a
Seraphic doctor.

The walks at these times are so much one's own--the tall
trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen! The halls
deserted, and with open doors inviting one to slip in
unperceived, and pay a devoir to some Founder or noble or
royal Benefactress (that should have been ours), whose
portrait seems to smile upon their over-looked beadsman, and
to adopt me for their own. Then, to take a peep in by the
way at the butteries, and sculleries, redolent of antique
hospitality: the immense caves of kitchens, kitchen
fire-places, cordial recesses; ovens whose first pies were
baked four centuries ago; and spits which have cooked for
Chaucer! Not the meanest minister among the dishes but is
hallowed to me through his imagination, and the Cook goes
forth a Manciple.

The next essay, "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," should
be read along with an earlier one, which does not belong actually to
the Elia series, "Recollections of Christ's Hospital." In the later
essay Lamb affected to look at the school as it might have been to a
scholar less fortunately circumstanced than himself, a boy far from
his family and friends, and the boy whom he selected was that one of
his school companions whom he knew best and with whom in manhood he
had sustained the closest friendship--S. T. Coleridge. That friend he
thus apostrophizes in a passage which has frequently been quoted:

Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day-spring
of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before
thee--the dark pillar not yet turned--Samuel Taylor
Coleridge--Logician, Metaphysician, Bard! How have I seen
the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still,
entranced with admiration (while he weighed the
disproportion between the _speech_ and the _garb_ of the
young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet
intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus or Plotinus (for
even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such
philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or
Pindar, while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to
the accents of the inspired charity-boy!

"The Two Races of Men," divides men into those who borrow and those
who lend, the theme being followed out with great humour, and going on
to those "whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers than
c