either of their income or brotherhood.  On the other hand, as regards their personal freedom and conduct, they are subject to a supervision which the Master of the hospital might render extremely annoying, were he so inclined; but the military restraint under which they have spent the active portion of their lives makes it easier for them to endure the domestic discipline here imposed upon their age.  The porter bore his testimony (whatever were its value) to their being as contented and happy as such a set of old people could possibly be, and affirmed that they spent much time in burnishing their silver badges, and were as proud of them as a nobleman of his star.  These badges, by-the-by, except one that was stolen and replaced in Queen Anne’s time, are the very same that decorated the original twelve brethren.

I have seldom met with a better guide than my friend the porter.  He appeared to take a genuine interest in the peculiarities of the establishment, and yet had an existence apart from them, so that he could the better estimate what those peculiarities were.  To be sure, his knowledge and observation were confined to external things, but, so far, had a sufficiently extensive scope.  He led me up the staircase and exhibited portions of the timber framework of the edifice that are reckoned to be eight or nine hundred years old, and are still neither worm-eaten nor decayed; and traced out what had been a great hall, in the days of the Catholic fraternity, though its area is now filled up with the apartments of the twelve brethren; and pointed to ornaments of sculptured oak, done in an ancient religious style of art, but hardly visible amid the vaulted dimness of the roof.  Thence we went to the chapel—­the Gothic church which I noted several pages back—­surmounting the gateway that stretches half across the street.  Here the brethren attend daily prayer, and have each a prayer-book of the finest paper, with a fair, large type for their old eyes.  The interior of the chapel is very plain, with a picture of no merit for an altar-piece, and a single old pane of painted glass in the great eastern window, representing—­no saint, nor angel, as is customary in such cases—­but that grim sinner, the Earl of Leicester.  Nevertheless, amid so many tangible proofs of his human sympathy, one comes to doubt whether the Earl could have been such a hardened reprobate, after all.

We ascended the tower of the chapel, and looked down between its battlements into the street, a hundred feet below us; while clambering half-way up were foxglove-flowers, weeds, small shrubs, and tufts of grass, that had rooted themselves into the roughnesses of the stone foundation.  Far around us lay a rich and lovely English landscape, with many a church-spire and noble country-seat, and several objects of high historic interest.  Edge Hill, where the Puritans defeated Charles I., is in sight on the edge of the horizon, and much nearer stands the house where Cromwell lodged