own desolate condition, when cast an orphan amongst strangers and foreigners, that he devised his splendid charity for poor, forlorn, and fatherless children.  One of the rooms in the college is singularly furnished.  “Girard had directed that a suitable room was to be set apart for the preservation of his books and papers; but from excess of pious care, or dread of the next-of kin, all the plain homely man’s effects were shovelled into this room.  Here are his boxes and his bookcase, his gig and his gaiters, his pictures and his pottery; and in a bookcase, hanging with careless grace, are his braces—­old homely knitted braces, telling their tale of simplicity and carefulness."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Gentleman’s Magazine, April. 1875.  George Dawson on “Niagara and Elsewhere.”]

One of the finest hospitals in London is that founded by Thomas Guy, the bookseller.  He is said to have been a miser.  At all events he must have been a thrifty and saving man.  No foundation such as that of Guy’s can be accomplished without thrift.  Men who accomplish such things must deny themselves for the benefit of others.  Thomas Guy appears early to have projected schemes of benevolence.  He first built and endowed almshouses at Tamworth for fourteen poor men and women, with pensions for each occupant; and with a thoughtfulness becoming his vocation, he furnished them with a library.  He had himself been educated at Tamworth, where he had doubtless seen hungry and homeless persons suffering from cleanness of teeth and the winter’s rage; and the almshouses were his contribution for their relief.  He was a bookseller in London at that time.  Guy prospered, not so much by bookselling, as by buying and selling South Sea Stock.  When the bubble burst, he did not hold a share:  but he had realized a profit of several hundred thousand pounds.  This sum he principally employed in building and endowing the hospital which bears his name.  The building was roofed in before his death, in 1724.

Scotch benefactors for the most part leave their savings for the purpose of founding hospitals for educational purposes.  There was first the Heriot’s Hospital, founded in Edinburgh by George Heriot, the goldsmith of James I., for maintaining and educating a hundred and eighty boys.  But the property of the hospital having increased in value—­the New Town of Edinburgh being for the most part built on George Heriot’s land—­the operations of the charity have been greatly extended; as many as four thousand boys and girls being now educated free of expense, in different parts of the city.  There are also the George Watson’s Hospital, the John Watson’s Hospital, the Orphan Hospital, two Maiden Hospitals, the Cauven’s Hospital, the Donaldson’s Hospital, the Stewart’s Hospital, and the splendid Fettes College (recently opened),—­all founded by Scottish benefactors for the ordinary education of boys and girls, and also for their higher education.  Edinburgh may well