RICHARD AND JOHN E. TAYLOR, RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET. PUBLISHED BY S. WALKER, 58, BARBICAN. SOLD BY SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO., STATIONERS'-HALL COURT; SHERWOOD AND CO., PATERNOSTER ROW. The Carthusian. BROOKE HALL. Brooke Hall, Aug. MDCCCXXXVII.-The arrangements exhibit a more than ordinary degree of good cheer and company; when the damask gives place to the mahogany, a massive epergne is observed to occupy the centre of the table, while the perfume of rose-water from an antique ewer, and the appearance of certain goodly fruits on the table, seem to announce that the master and officers this day hold what in collegiate dialect would be termed a Gaudy, an Exceeding, or Feast-day, and which presupposes a Governor's Meeting to have taken place in the morning. Present:-The whole conclave. The Master, Preacher, Schoolmaster, Usher, Registrar, Physician, Surgeon, Auditor, Receiver, Reader, and AssistantMaster, with an adequate sprinkling of guests, more or less connected with Domus. "Floreat" and "The Governors" having been despatched with all due honours, "One really feels, Master," said the Preacher, "the evil of notoriety. Unless some decided step be taken, the hospitality of our hospital will be abused even beyond the endurance of good Thomas' broad acres." L 66 'Explain," replied, in an authoritative tone, the dignitary addressed. "Why, look ye, Master, it was not a year ago that our Table here was the quietest and most retired symposium that met within the sound of Bow-bells. Save an occasional visit from a truant cricket-ball or a misdirected stone, no stranger ever 'dropped in' to the penetralia of Brooke Hall. Placed in the very centre of this huge metropolis, midway between the antagonist principles of May-fair and the Minories, our humble obscurity left us unmolested yet content. While thousands of the Western empire were daily and nightly revelling in all the excitements and enchantments of the Court and the Crush-room, of Morning Posts and maroon chariots, Duvernay's pirouettes and Grisi's polaccas, of Morning concerts and Evening debates; and while equal thousands of the Eastern division were as fully and as heartily occupied in American bonds and Dutch bottoms, Railroad shares and refined sugars, and otherwise worshiping in the countless little temples which Mammon is daily building up for himself in the Oriental quarters of this city,-unconscious of the din with which we were surrounded, unconcerned with their speculations, undisturbed by their politics, and unchanged by their fashions, our little party met, if not in primæval, at least in monastic simplicity, eating the bread of contentedness with the salt of sociality. Who, among the thousands of the giddy and the gaining crowds around us, ever dreamt of our unobtrusive table? Yet each day, as regularly as the bell tolled, did our Collegium, not without a blessing on the liberal hand that supplied us, assemble in peace and quietness; nor could the old monks, our predecessors on this classic ground, wind along the cloisters in more unostentatious guise than we." |