THE WESTMINSTER SCHOLAR. Reminiscences of former Times-Lamentations of Old Crony-Ancient Sports and Sprees-Modern Improvements Hints to Builders and Buyers-Some Account of the School and its Worthies-Recollections of old Schoolfellows-Sketches of Character -The Living and the Dead. "Fast by, an old but noble fabric stands, No vulgar work, but raised by princely hands; In living monuments, an endless praise." From a poem by a Westminster Scholar, written during Dr. Friend's Mastership, in 1699. "WHAT say you to a stroll through Thorney Island,1 this morning?" said old Crony, with whom I had been taking a dejeuné à la fourchette; "you have indulged your readers with all the whims and eccentricities of Eton and of Oxford, and, in common justice, you must not pass by the Westminster blacks." 2 Crony had, I learned, been a foundation scholar during the mastership of Dr. Samuel Smith; when the poet Churchill, Robert Lloyd, (the son of the under-master) Bonnel Thornton, George Colman the elder, Richard Cumberland, and a host of other highly-gifted names, were associated within the precincts of the abbey cloisters. Our way towards 1 The abbey ground, so called by the monkish writers; but, since Busby's time, more significantly designated by the scholars Birch Island.-Vide Tickler. 2 Black -s from Westminster; ruff- -s from Winchester; and gentlemen from Eton.--Old Cambridge Proverb. |