The modest little building referred to is named "The Convalescent and Sea-side Home for Orphans," Harold Road, Margate. The parent institutions are "The Orphan Working School," at Haverstock Hill, and that most attractive series of pretty cottages on the brow of the hill at Hornsey Rise, which have been more than once spoken of as "Lilliput Village," but the style and title of which is "The Alexandra Orphanage for Infants"—a name, the distinguishing feature of which is that it is immediately associated with its first patroness, the Princess of Wales. Of the Home at Margate I need not now speak particularly, except to note that it is for the reception of the little convalescents, who—suffering, as many of them do, from constitutional and hereditary weakness, which is yet not actual sickness, and recovering, as many of them are, from the feeble condition which has been to some extent remedied by the careful nurture, good food, and healthy regimen, of the large institutions near London—are not fit patients either for their own or any other infirmary wards, and yet require to be restored to greater strength before they can join the main body of their young companions in the school or the playground. Enough that it is picturesque and substantially pretty, as becomes a place which is to become the home of thirty children, taken from among nearly six hundred, the parents of nearly half of whom have died of consumption, and so left to their offspring that tendency to a feeble {146} constitution which can be best remedied by the grand medicine of sea-air, wholesome nutritious food, and a judicious alternation of healthful exercise and rest. It is to Mr. Joseph Soul—the late indefatigable secretary of the Working School, with which he has been connected for nearly forty years, and the honorary secretary of the Alexandra Orphanage, of which he may be regarded as the virtual founder—that the proposal to establish this Convalescent Home was due, and its affairs are administered at the office of the two charities, at 63, Cheapside. But it is necessary to tell as briefly as possible the story of the oldest of the two institutions of which this building is to be an accessory—not only the oldest of these two, but probably the oldest voluntarily supported orphan asylum in London, since it dates from 116 years ago, when George II. was King, when Louis XV. was scandalising Europe and preparing the Revolution, when Wesleyan Methodism was commencing a vast religious revival, when Doctor Johnson had but just finished writing his dictionary, and when William Hogarth was painting those wonderful pictures which are still the most instructive records of society and fashion as seen in the year 1758.