lifted up beyond their own family nor depressed by mean habits, such as an
ordinary charity school is supposed to generate. They floated onwards
towards manhood in a wholesome middle region, between a too rare ether and
the dense and abject atmosphere of pauperism. The Hospital boy (as Lamb
says) never felt himself to be a charity boy. The antiquity and regality
of the foundation to which he belonged, and the mode or style of his
education, sublimated him beyond the heights of the laboring classes.

From the "Christ's Hospital five and thirty years ago," it would appear
that the comforts enjoyed by Lamb himself exceeded those of his
schoolfellows, owing to his friends supplying him with extra delicacies.
There is no doubt that great tyranny was then exercised by the older boys
(the monitors) over the younger ones; that the scholars had anything but
choice and ample rations; and that hunger ("the eldest, strongest of the
passions") was not a tyrant unknown throughout this large institution.

Lamb remained at Christ's Hospital for seven years; but on the half-
holidays (two in every week) he used to go to his parents' home, in the
Temple, and when there would muse on the terrace or by the lonely
fountain, or contemplate the dial, or pore over the books in Mr. Salt's
library, until those antiquely-colored thoughts rose up in his mind which
in after years he presented to the world.

Amongst the advantages which Charles derived from his stay at Christ's
Hospital, was one which, although accidental, was destined to have great
effect on his subsequent life. It happened that he reckoned amongst his
schoolfellows one who afterwards achieved a very extensive reputation,
namely, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This youth was his elder by two years;
and his example influenced Lamb materially on many occasions, and
ultimately led him into literature. Coleridge's projects, at the outset of