tell; but it is certain that he speedily rid himself of the spoils of the Church, and that, within twenty years afterwards, the edifice became the property of the famous Dudley, Earl of Leicester, brother of the Earl of Warwick.  He devoted the ancient religious precinct to a charitable use, endowing it with an ample revenue, and making it the perpetual home of twelve poor, honest, and war-broken soldiers, mostly his own retainers, and natives either of Warwickshire or Gloucestershire.  These veterans, or others wonderfully like them, still occupy their monkish dormitories and haunt the time-darkened corridors and galleries of the hospital, leading a life of old-fashioned comfort, wearing the old-fashioned cloaks, and burnishing the identical silver badges which the Earl of Leicester gave to the original twelve.  He is said to have been a bad man in his day; but he has succeeded in prolonging one good deed into what was to him a distant future.

On the projecting story, over the arched entrance, there is the date, 1571, and several coats-of-arms, either the Earl’s or those of his kindred, and immediately above the door-way a stone sculpture of the Bear and Ragged Staff.

Passing through the arch, we find ourselves in a quadrangle, or inclosed court, such as always formed the central part of a great family-residence in Queen Elizabeth’s time, and earlier.  There can hardly be a more perfect specimen of such an establishment than Leicester’s Hospital.  The quadrangle is a sort of sky-roofed hall, to which there is convenient access from all parts of the house.  The four inner fronts, with their high, steep roofs and sharp gables, look into it from antique windows, and through open corridors and galleries along the sides; and there seems to be a richer display of architectural devices and ornaments, quainter carvings in oak, and more fantastic shapes of the timber framework, than on the side towards the street.  On the wall opposite the arched entrance are the following inscriptions, comprising such moral rules, I presume, as were deemed most essential for the daily observance of the community:  “HONOR ALL MEN”—­“FEAR GOD”—­“HONOR THE KING”—­“LOVE THE BROTHERHOOD”; and again, as if this latter injunction needed emphasis and repetition among a household of aged people soured with the hard fortune of their previous lives,—­“BE KINDLY AFFECTIONED ONE TO ANOTHER.”  One sentence, over a door communicating with the Master’s side of the house, is addressed to that dignitary,—­“HE THAT RULETH OVER MEN MUST BE JUST.”  All these are charactered in black-letter, and form part of the elaborate ornamentation of the Louse.  Everywhere—­on the walls, over windows and doors, and at all points where there is room to place them—­appear escutcheons of arms, cognizances, and crests, emblazoned in their proper colors, and illuminating the ancient quadrangle with their splendor.  One of these devices is a large image of a porcupine on an heraldic wreath, being the crest of the Lords