FROM THE STATUE IN FRONT OF THE HOSPITAL.
There is one other endowed school not yet destroyed. It is the Blue Coat School, first opened in 1688 for boys. In the year 1709 the present school buildings were erected. They consist of a charming red-brick hall with the figure of a scholar over the porch; a little garden full of greenery is at the back; at one side is the master’s residence, a two-storied house covered all over with a curtain of Virginia creeper; another little garden, full of such flowers as will grow in the London air, is behind this house. But master and boys, when they look around them, begin to tremble, for their place is old, it is beautiful, it adorns the street, it is sacred to the memory of two hundred years of Boy—thirty generations of Boy. It is still most useful—therefore one feels certain that it is doomed; it must soon go, to make room for residential flats and mansions fifteen stories high; it must, we have no doubt, follow the other monuments of the Past, and be absorbed into Consolidated Schools. If there were any other reason wanted for the destruction of the School, it is the tradition that Wren built it.
GREY COAT HOSPITAL FROM THE GARDEN.
To my mind Westminster possesses, apart from the Abbey, but one Church—that of St. Margaret’s. Other modern churches there are, but one does not heed them: they are things of to-day; even St. John’s and St. Martin’s are but of yesterday. St. Margaret’s is eight hundred years old; if not built by the Confessor, it was built—that is to say, the first church on this site was built—soon after his death. The history of St. Margaret’s Church must be told by an ecclesiastic; we need only remember that Caxton lies buried here; there is a tablet to his memory put up in 1820 by the Roxburgh Club. Raleigh is buried here—within the chancel. James Harrington, author of “Oceana,” is buried here. John Skelton, with whom we have conversed in Sanctuary, is buried here. Here Milton was married to Katharine Woodcock, who died in childbirth a year later:
CARVING FROM THE DOORWAY OF EMANUEL HOSPITAL.
Methought I saw my late espousèd saint
Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave.
Mine, such as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in heaven, without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind.
Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined.