At seven, Leigh Hunt was admitted into the grammar-school of Christ's hospital, where he remained till he was fifteen, and received a good foundation in the Greek and Latin languages. Mr. Hunt describes very charmingly the two houses where, as a boy, he used to visit with his mother; one of these being that of West, the painter, who had married his mother's aunt; the aunt, however, being much of the same age as herself: the other was that of Mr. Godfrey Thornton, of the great mercantile house of that name. "How I loved," says Leigh Hunt, "the graces in the one, and every thing in the other! Mr. West had bought his house not long, I believe, after he came to England; and he had added a gallery at the back of it, terminating in a couple of lofty rooms. The gallery was a continuation of the hall passage, and, together with the rooms, formed three sides of a garden, very small, but elegant, with a grass-plot in the middle, and busts upon stands under an arcade. In the interior, the gallery made an angle at a little distance as you went up it; then a shorter one, and then took a longer stretch into the two rooms; and it was hung with his sketches and pictures all the way. In a corner between the two angles, and looking down the lower part of the gallery, was a study, with casts of Venus and Apollo on each side of the door. The two rooms contained the largest of the pictures; and in the farther one, after stepping softly down the gallery, as if respecting the dumb life on the walls, you generally found the mild and quiet artist at his work; happy, for he thought himself immortal." West, it is well known, was brought up a Quaker, and had been so poorly educated that he could hardly read. Leigh Hunt states his belief that West did a great deal of work for George III. for very little profit; then, as since, the honor was thought of itself nearly enough. "As Mr. West," continues Leigh Hunt, "was almost sure to be found at work in the farthest room, habited in his white woolen gown, so you might have predicated, with equal certainty, that Mrs. West was sitting in the parlor reading. I used to think that if I had such a parlor to sit in, I should do just as she did. It was a good-sized room, with two windows looking out on the little garden I spoke of, and opening into it from one of them by a flight of steps. The garden, with its busts in it, and the pictures which you knew were on the other side of its wall, had an Italian look. The room was hung with engravings and colored prints. Among them was the Lion's Hunt, by Rubens; the Hierarchy, with the Godhead, by Raphael, which I hardly thought it right to look at; and two screens by the fireside, containing prints from Angelica Kauffman, of the Loves of Angelica and Medoro, which I could have looked at from morning till night."