was a few years ago one of Sutton’s “poor brethren.”  The pensioners were always called cods by the boys, probably short for codgers.  Each had a room plainly furnished, about one hundred and fifty dollars a year, rations, and a dinner every day in the great hall.  The boys, who did not often know their names, gave them nicknames by which they became generally known.  Thus three were called “Battle,” “Murder” and “Sudden Death;” another “Larky,” in consequence of a certain levity of demeanor at divine service.  These old gentlemen were expected to attend chapel daily.  Every evening at nine o’clock the chapel bell tolled the exact number of them, just as Great Tom at Christ Church, Oxford, nightly rings out the number of the students.  Being for the most part aged men, soured by misfortune and failure, they are naturally enough often hard to please and difficult to deal with.

No passage in Thackeray’s writings is more deeply pathetic than that in which he records the last scene of one “poor brother,” that Bayard of fiction, Colonel Newcome:  “At the usual evening hour the chapel-bell began to toll, and Thomas Newcome’s hands outside the bed feebly beat time.  And just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and he lifted up his head a little, and quickly said, ‘Adsum!’ and fell back.  It was the word he used at school when names, were called; and lo, he whose heart was as that of a little child had answered to his name and stood in the presence of the Master.”

AN OLD “GOWN-BOY.”

[Footnote 2:  The original seat of the Carthusian order was at Chartreux in Dauphiny, where it was founded by Saint Bruno.]

[Footnote 3:  Witham, which is not far from Fonthill, became in 1763 the property of Alderman Beckford, the millionaire father of the celebrated author of Vathek.]

[Footnote 4:  Lord Suffolk probably applied the purchase-money (thirteen thousand pounds) to help build the palace, called Audley End or Inn, he raised in Essex.  It stands on abbey-land granted by Henry VIII. to his wife’s father, Lord Audley of Walden, near Saffron-Walden in Essex, and was generally regarded as the most magnificent structure of its period, although Evelyn gives the preference to Clarendon House, that grand mansion of the chancellor’s which provoked so much jealousy against him, and came to be called Dunkirk House, from the insinuation that it was built out of the funds paid by the French for Dunkirk.  Abbey-lands are supposed by many to carry ill-luck with them, and quickly to change hands.  Audley End has proved no exception to this hypothetical fate.  Only a portion of it now remains, but this, though much marred by injudicious alterations, is amply sufficient to show how grand it was.  It has long since passed out of the hands of the Howards, and now belongs to Lord Braybrooke, whose family name is Nevill.  A relation of his, a former peer of the name, edited the best edition of Pepys’ Diary, in which and in Evelyn is frequent reference to Audley End.]