“Upon this foundation are maintained twenty-nine boys, who wear a long green skirt, bound round with a red girdle, similar in form to that worn by the boys of Christ’s Hospital.”
Where is this lovely place now? It is gone. On its site are some branches of the Army and Navy Stores. Think what a city loses by the destruction of such a place! The daily object-lesson in our duty to the friendless and the helpless; the memory of bygone worthies; the sentiment of brotherhood. That is one way of considering the loss. Another way is to think of it as a place of singular beauty, of such beauty as we cannot possibly reproduce. And we have willfully and needlessly destroyed it! It is a national disaster of the gravest, the most irreparable kind, that such monuments as old almshouses, old City churches, old schools, old gates, old foundations of any kind, should be given over to any body of men, with permission to tear down and destroy at their will, and under pretense of benefiting the parish. Can one benefit a man by destroying his memory? Can one
GREY COAT HOSPITAL: THE ENTRANCE.
improve a parish by cutting off its connection with the past?
GREY COAT BOY. GREY COAT GIRL.