The Carthusian.

BROOKE HALL.

Brooke Hall, past 6 P.M.-A dark wainscoted room; the table pulled in front of a blazing fire; old sash-windows of the date of William III.; the black portrait of Master Brooke frowning down on the revelry below; a sideboard at the further end of the room decorated with the plate of "Domus."

Present:-The Preacher, Schoolmaster, Usher, Registrar, Auditor, Reader, Assistant-Master, and a Guest.

(The Butler, having set a jug of hot water on the table, which glitters with decanters and glasses, has just left the room, shut the door, and "sported the oak.")

"CHURCH AND KING!" said the Preacher, as he passed on to his neighbour the bottle of port from which he had just bumpered his own glass.

"With all my heart!" responded a stout kind-looking man who occupied the next arm-chair; "CHURCH AND KING!" as he took a scrutinizing glance at the fire through the ruddy medium of the liquor in his hand.

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The toast went round in whispered orthodoxy till it came to the Guest.

"We always make a point, sir," observed the Preacher, "of giving this genuine old toast the precedence. Our predecessors did the same before us, and we see no reason to be ashamed of keeping up the old custom. We imply neither politics nor party, but lay that upon those who would break in upon old-fashioned gentlemen like ourselves, who are ashamed neither of their loyalty nor their religion."

"You're quite right, sir; all good Christians and honest subjects come within my meaning of the words; and let them take offence at it who care not to be considered the one or the other. I remember the toast as long as I have known Charterhouse."

"And that can be no few years?" said the Schoolmaster interrogatively.

"Before you were born, sir. I was one of old Berdmore's first scholars. He used to call me his very first, but he chose to forget a few idle dogs who entered before me, and did not stay long."

"Then you were Raine's cotemporary?" observed the Usher.

"We were at Trinity together, and I stood against him for the Fellowship, but he beat me; and our fates in life have been strangely different."

"You have seen little of England?" suggested the Reader.

"Little of England, and less of Charterhouse. Following a soldier's fortune in the East, to an age which few when they have attained there, have afterwards cared to return to their native land, I knew nothing of my old school, save the occasional meeting of a junior officer, who spoke of masters and customs unknown to me.

Since the year when I spoke the Oration in 17- till the present day I have never entered within these walls; and had it not been for the kindness of the gentleman. opposite"-(here the stranger bowed towards the Usher) -"whom I met as I was strolling over my old haunts this morning, I should have had little opportunity of knowing whether there yet survived in Charterhouse the same kindly feeling among her sons as that we used to be proud of when I left her fostering care.'

"I trust," replied the Schoolmaster, "that from Crusius downwards, the golden chain"-(here the Assistant smiled at some abstruse Greek allusion, but the Schoolmaster, denying the pun, proceeded)" I trust, I say, that the golden chain yet remains unbroken which links brother to brother in the honourable bonds of Carthusian fellowship; and I think I may venture to assert that there is not one who leaves us at the present day who would not willingly add on his link to keep up the succession uninterrupted."

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"Take the experience of a senior like myself," said the Stranger, warming up with unaccustomed fire, "who am old enough to be father to all of you who here present, except the Usher and the Registrar"—(he nodded to two grey-headed gentlemen who sat opposite,)" take the experience of an old man, that there are no recollections to which we recur with so much pleasure as to those of school. They say 'tis folly to talk of our schoolboy days as the happiest of our life, and it may be so, but sure I am that they are the happiest of our reminiscences. Oh! sirs, it is but an old tale to talk of the freshness of our spirits and the buoyancy of our hopes, when

'Limbs are strong and courage high,'

with the wide world before us, the straight and open

highway of honour for the noble, and the yet broader expanse of ambition's ocean for the adventurous, with the by-paths and crooked ways for the coward and the cunning. But if it be a tale that will not bear telling, man's blood will flow a different course before every youth's heart will cease to beat in witness to its truth, and every old man's memory to repeat the lesson full oftentimes to himself. No, no; I might have doubted it till I came here to day; till I saw my old haunts, I might have fancied that a goaded and jaded creature like myself would look with indifference or disgust on the spot whence the hell-hounds of worldly craft were first let loose upon him; but the cool pastures and running waters of the morning are not more refreshing to the hunted hart when its chase is nearly ended, than the green scenes of my boyhood have returned to me to day."

"Nor does it require," continued the Preacher, "the agonizing struggles and fevered occupations of ambition to make us relish the quiet and calming remembrances of our early days. Though the undisturbed lot of my life has been cast upon the same ground as that of my childhood, I will yield to no man in the endearing affections which bind me to the spot of my youth.' I hold it a sacred as well as a pleasing duty to cultivate those local attachments, which the withering spirit of the present age may condemn as prejudiced, but which will ever bear the impress of the best philosophy of the heart."

"Aye, and it is a useful as well as a pleasant duty," said the Auditor, addressing himself to the Schoolmaster, while the foregoing conversation was still proceeding; "there are few of us, I believe, who will not attribute some portion of their success in life to the

helping hand of a schoolfellow, and the approving smile of their old master, which has come to their aid at the very moment perhaps when they were struggling with difficulties apparently hopeless. I have made it a rule in life to distrust the man who has no kind word for his school, and no hearty shake of the hand for his schoolfellow."

"And thus," interrupted the Reader, "you may remark that there are few great names in English literature who have not gladly testified in after life their affection and gratitude to the place of their education; they have delighted to honour their school, and their school has taken equal delight in honouring them. How intimately associated are the names of Gray and Eton, Dryden and Westminster, Byron and Harrow ! And why should Addison and Charterhouse be forgotten? I know not why we have been so backward in putting forth our claim to have those two names linked together in indissoluble fame."

"Who knows," continued the Schoolmaster, "but that Gownboys' Hall was the scene of the first rude drafts of the inimitable Spectators, and that a school theme was the origin of the literary productions, as a school-fellowship certainly was of the literary partnership, of Addison* and Steele? The former must at least owe to Charterhouse the classic elegance of his Latin verse, and his fine taste doubtless received some of its elements from the tone of his master. It

"At the Charterhouse Addison made acquaintance with two persons, for whom he had ever after an entire friendship, Stephen Clay, Esq., of the Inner Temple, author of the Epistle in Verse, from the Elector of Bavaria to the French King after the battle of Ramilies; and Sir Richard Steele, whom he served both with his pen and purse."-Oldmixon, Hist. of Eng. xi. 632.