Bishop van Mildert, the last Prince Bishop of Durham received his early education in this School, and many now living in high positions in the Church, besides two exLord Mayors testify to the soundness of the education they have received in a school, whose traditions carry it far back into the middle ages, before the times of the Plantagenets, though by a sort of fiction Queen Elizabeth is considered as its founder, and her accession day the 17th of November is appointed for the annual commemoration of founders and benefactors. In 1840 the school was taken down, the site being required for the Borough Market. It was rebuilt in Sumner-street, the ground being given by the joint liberality of Dr. Sumner then Bishop of Winchester, and the Messrs. Pott, who held a lease of the ground at the time, and so it is that the school though removed from the classic neighbourood of Bankside, and from beneath the shadow of the Old Church stands on part of what was once the Bishop of Winchester's Park, and in a street bearing the name of a former Bishop. Since the changes in the Diocese, the Bishop of Rochester is now considered visitor of the School, and has shewn a lively interest in its welfare.

The people of Bermondsey were not long in following the example of St. Saviour's, and St. Olave's School was set on foot and constituted the free Grammar School of Queen Elizabeth of the parishioners of the parish of St. Olave's by letters patent issued in 1571. The school was built on the south side of Duke Street, leading from Tooley Street to London Bridge, but the ground being required for the London and Greenwich Railway Company, a fresh site was obliged to be found and the new school was erected in the parish of St. John, Horsley-Down. It was again disturbed by the Railway, and the present building is a handsome one in the Tudor style.

This school was formerly confined to the inhabitants of the two parishes of St. Olave and St. John, but during the last few years has been thrown open to other scholars on payment. It is now in a most flourishing condition.

The two schools of St. Saviour and St. Olave, though intended for the sons of poor as well as rich, are classical schools, though St. Olave's has schools of lower grade attached to it, and both have of late years added modern languages and modern science to their course. But two hundred years ago the classics were almost the only subjects of study, and Mrs. Newcomen left some houses and land to provide for a certain number of boys and girls to be clothed and educated at the parish schools, and also for the clothing, in humble fashion, of poor widows of the parish. The value of this property has so increased, and the management has been so careful and conscientious, that two large schools, one for boys and one for girls, were built some few years ago in King Street in the Borough, where the children receive a sound commercial education, and the poor widows are still clothed. The charity is so important that one of the St. Saviour's wardens is called "The Newcomen's Warden." Their festival day is the 2nd of November, the birthday of their foundress.

Before I close this chapter let us remember, with due honour, the name of Edward Alleyne, founder of the college of God's gift, Dulwich, and there can be no more appropriate place than here, for he forms a connecting link between the subject of education and the amusements of Southwark. Alleyne was one of the band of actors and authors who lived, or played, or wrote on Bankside. He gained much fame as an actor, and like Shakespeare, seems to have been a man of high character and thrifty

habits. There is a story told by Aubrey, which I give for what it is worth, that in some play he was representing the person of the Arch-tempter, when Satan himself appeared, which gave him so great a shock that he retired from the stage, and devoted his property-which was large-to God's service. His scheme was intended to benefit the four parishes with which he was connected, Bishopsgate, where he was born, Southwark, where he had acted and principally made his money, St. Luke's, where he held property, Camberwell, where he lived in his later years. As matters are at present, Camberwell swallows up by far the lion's share.

In token of his humility he became a pensioner on his own charity, and lived in the College he had built.

CHAPTER X.

THE DRAMA AND SHAKESPEARE.

N a former Chapter I described how the earliest secular plays were probably acted in the courts of such old Inns as abounded in our High Street, where the spectators stept out of their rooms on balconies which overhung the court, and watched the performances, rude enough, probably, in the courtyard below. Scenic representations have

always been a great delight, and remain now almost the only amusements which all classes enjoy together-certainly the only one they enjoy under one roof. The ancient Greeks and Romans specially delighted in these entertainments, and some of their plays are acted, at least by school boys, to the present day.

But when Christianity began to prevail actors were classed with gladiators, their profession was pronounced infamous, and the body of an actor was denied Christian burial. This may seem bigoted, but we must remember how the early Christians had to fight against the old, bad, heathen traditions, and that the lives of actors were so notoriously bad as to make their calling infamous, even had the plays themselves not been objectionable.

But the love of acting and representation was too strong for the ecclesiastical anathemas, and so with that wondrous adaptation to circumstances that the Church of Rome has always shewn, the Ecclesiastics hit upon the idea of taking the acting into their own hands, and when Bibles were few, for each was the painful labour of a separate writer, and readers were consequently few also, they conceived the idea of representing, before the very eyes of the people, various important Bible stories, as well as the lives and deaths of martyrs and of saints, something like, perhaps, though scarcely as elaborate, as the Ober Ammergau Passion Play, still represented every ten years in Bavaria. The acting was generally in the Monastic or Cathedral Church, and the actors were the monks, priests, and choristers. The scenery was doubtless rude enough, and things which would appear shocking and profane to us, did not offend their notions of propriety. So the Almighty was represented generally under the figure of the Pope, the most solemn and dignified personage of whom they knew, and

the different scenes of Heaven, Earth, and Hell were shewn by three platforms, of which the highest represented Heaven, the second Earth, and a lower one full of devils with howling voices and hairy mouths, long tails and cloven hoofs, passed for the infernal regions.

These mysteries, as they were called, lasted some of them for several days, as, for instance, the Creation, which took six days to complete.

Gradually a new feature was introduced, and the moralities succeeded the mysteries, when the virtues, vices, and passions were personified. These were acted in monasteries, in the halls of castles, and at court. They grew by degrees from Christmas masques and mummers, and slid gradually into plays. Bishop Bale, a great writer of the Middle Ages, is considered one of the founders of our national drama. He was author of several moralities, and at last ventured upon something like an historical play, and produced the drama of King John. A considerable number of pieces were also written, to be performed by the students of the inns of court and universities.

But the taste for dramatic entertainments grew, and at last a company was formed under the patronage of Elizabeth's favourite, and called the Earl of Leicester's Servants. A theatre was built on the north side of the Thames near Blackfriars, close by, if not on the spot where now stands the vast establishment of the Times newspaper; this was called "The Theatre," the first that ever was erected in England since the time of the Romans. But some cause~ it is said the growing Puritanism of the City of Londonsoon drove the players over the water, and a new theatre, far more famous, was built, called "The Globe," on Bankside. "The Globe Theatre," says an article in the Mirror, “ stood on a plot of ground now occupied by four houses contiguous