The Christ’s Hospital boy is a religions character.  His school is eminently a religious foundation; it has its peculiar prayers, its services at set times, its graces, hymns, and anthems, following each other in an almost monastic closeness of succession.  This religious character in him is not always untinged with superstition.  That is not wonderful, when we consider the thousand tales and traditions which must circulate, with undisturbed credulity, amongst so many boys, that have so few checks to their belief from any intercourse with the world at large; upon whom their equals in age must work so much, their elders so little.  With this leaning towards an over-belief in matters of religion, which will soon correct itself when he comes out into society, may be classed a turn for romance above most other boys.  This is to be traced in the same manner to their excess of society with each other, and defect of mingling with the world.  Hence the peculiar avidity with which such books as the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainments,” and others of a still wilder cast, are, or at least were in my time, sought for by the boys.  I remember when some half-dozen of them set off from school, without map, card, or compass, on a serious expedition to find out Philip Quarll’s Island.

The Christ’s Hospital boy’s sense of right and wrong is peculiarly tender and apprehensive.  It is even apt to run out into ceremonial observances, and to impose a yoke upon itself beyond the strict obligations of the moral law.  Those who were contemporaries with me at that school thirty years ago, will remember with what more than Judaic rigor the eating of the fat of certain boiled meats[1] was interdicted.  A boy would have blushed as at the exposure of some heinous immorality, to have been detected eating that forbidden portion of his allowance of animal food, the whole of which, while he was in health, was little more than sufficient to allay his hunger.  The same, or even greater, refinement was shown in the rejection of certain kinds of sweet-cake.  What gave rise to these supererogatory penances, these self-denying ordinances, I could never learn;[2] they certainly argue no defect of the conscientious principle.  A little excess in that article is not undesirable in youth, to make allowance for the inevitable waste which comes in maturer years.  But in the less ambiguous line of duty, in those directions of the moral feelings which cannot be mistaken or depreciated, I will relate what took place in the year 1785, when Mr. Perry, the steward, died.  I must be pardoned for taking my instances from my own times.  Indeed, the vividness of my recollections, while I am upon this subject, almost bring back those times; they are present to me still.  But I believe that in the years which have elapsed since the period which I speak of, the character of the Christ’s Hospital boy is very little changed.  Their situation in point of many comforts is improved; but that which