[Footnote 9: This was a post which Thackeray coveted, and had he lived might possibly have filled. The master's lodge, a spacious antique residence, lined with portraits of governors in their robes of estate, by Lely, Kneller, etc., would in his hands have become a resort of rare interest and hospitality.] [Footnote 10: In what is known as "The Charter-House Play," which describes some boyish orgies and their subsequent punishment, the latter is described in the pathetic lines: Now the victim low is bending, Now the fearful rod descending, Hark a blow! Again, again Sounds the instrument of pain. Goddess of mercy! oh impart Thy kindness to the doctor's heart: Bid him words of pardon say-- Cast the blood-stained scourge away. In vain, in vain! he will not hear: Mercy is a stranger there. Justice, unrelenting dame, First asserts her lawful claim. This is aye her maxim true: "They who sin must suffer too." When of fun we've had our fill, Justice then sends in her bill, And as soon as we have read it, Pay we must: she gives no credit. There is some rather fine doggerel too, in which the doctor--the Dr. Portman _Pendennis_--apostrophizes a monitor in whom he had believed, but finds to have been as bad as the rest. _The Doctor_ (with voice indicative of tears and indignation): Oh, Simon Steady! Simon Steady, oh! What would your father say to see you so?-- You whom I always trusted, whom I deemed As really good and honest as you seemed. Are you the leader of this lawless throng, The chief of all that's dissolute and wrong? _Then with awful emphasis_: Bad is the drunkard, shameless is the youth Who dares desert the sacred paths of truth; But he who hides himself 'neath Virtue's pall, The painted hypocrite, is worse than all! In acting this play the manner of the real doctor (Mr. Gladstone's old tutor, now dean of Peterborough) was often imitated to the life, which of course brought down the house.] [Footnote 11: In his curious _London and the Country, Carbonadoed and Quartered into severall Characters_ (1632), Lupton writes under the head of "CHARTER-HOUSE. "This place is well described by three things--magnificence, munificence and religious government. The first shows the wealth of the founder; the second, the means to make the good thing done durable; the third demonstrates his intent that thus established it.... This one place hath sent many a famous member to the universities, and not a few to the wars. The deed of this man that so ordered this house is much spoken of and commended; but there's none (except only one--Sion College) that hath as yet either striven to equal or imitate that, and I fear never will."] A PRINCESS OF THULE BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON." CHAPTER IV. ROMANCE-TIME.