commences, and the visitors walk between the tables. At its close
the ‘trade-boys’ take up the baskets, bowls, jacks, piggins, and
candlesticks, and pass in procession, the bowing to the Governors
being curiously formal. This spectacle was witnessed by Queen
Victoria and Prince Albert in 1845.
Among the more eminent Bluecoat boys are Joshua Barnes, editor of
Anacreon and Euripides; Jeremiah Markland, the eminent critic,
particularly in Greek Literature; Camden, the antiquary; Bishop
Stillingfleet; Samuel Richardson, the novelist; Thomas Mitchell,
the translator of Aristophanes; Thomas Barnes, many years editor
of the London Times; Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and Leigh Hunt.
No boy is admitted before he is seven years old, or after he is
nine; and no boy can remain in the school after he is fifteen,
King’s boys and ‘Grecians’ alone excepted. There are about 500
Governors, at the head of whom are the Sovereign and the Prince of
Wales. The qualification for a Governor is payment of 500
pounds.–Ibid.
GENERAL NOTE.
One hears much about the ‘hideous Blue Laws of Connecticut,’ and
is accustomed to shudder piously when they are mentioned. There
are people in America–and even in England!–who imagine that they
were a very monument of malignity, pitilessness, and inhumanity;
whereas in reality they were about the first SWEEPING DEPARTURE
FROM JUDICIAL ATROCITY which the ‘civilised’ world had seen. This
humane and kindly Blue Law Code, of two hundred and forty years
ago, stands all by itself, with ages of bloody law on the further
side of it, and a century and three-quarters of bloody English law
on THIS side of it.
There has never been a time–under the Blue Laws or any other–
when above FOURTEEN crimes were punishable by death in
Connecticut. But in England, within the memory of men who are
still hale in body and mind, TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE crimes
were punishable by death! {10} These facts are worth knowing–and
worth thinking about, too.