Leaving Queen Square by _Great Ormond Street_ (eastward), we immediately arrive, on the north side (No. 50), at The Children’s Hospital, adjacent to the Catholic Church and Convent of St. John. In 1858, February 9th, a public dinner was arranged, by way of charitable appeal, for funds necessary to carry on and develop the work. It was happily resolved to invite Charles Dickens to preside on that occasion, and he “threw himself into the service heart and soul.” His earnest, pathetic, but powerful appeal—“majestic in its own simplicity”—that night added more than £3000 to the treasury, which amount was, two months afterwards, substantially increased by the proceeds of a public reading of his “Christmas Carol.” It is pleasant to record that this institution has ever since flourished amain, thus fulfilling the prediction of Dickens when, suggesting that the enterprise could not be possibly maintained unless the Hospital were made better known, he continued as follows:— “I limit myself to saying—better known, because I will not believe that, in a Christian community of fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, it can fail, being better known, to be well and richly endowed.” We may here recall the scene narrated in chapter 9 of “Our Mutual Friend,” when _Johnny_ makes his will and arranges his affairs, leaving “a kiss for the boofer lady”— “The family whom God had brought together were not all asleep, but were all quiet. From bed to bed, a light womanly tread and a pleasant fresh face passed in the silence of the night. A little head would lift itself into the softened light here and there, to be kissed as the face went by—for these little patients are very loving—and would then submit itself to be composed to rest again. . . . Over most of the beds, the toys were yet grouped as the children had left them when they last laid themselves down, and in their innocent grotesqueness and incongruity they might have stood for the children’s dreams.” Proceeding eastward by _Great Ormond Street_ and turning (left) through _Lamb’s Conduit Street_, to its northern end, we face the entrance of the Foundling Hospital. This beneficent institution was established by Captain Thomas Coram, about the middle of the last century, and is associated with “No Thoroughfare,” the Christmas number (and last in the series) of “All the Year Round,” 1867. Visitors attending the morning service of the _Foundling Church_ on Sundays are admitted to the children’s _Dining-Hall_ thereafter, and so may have an opportunity of realising the scene portrayed by Dickens, when the “veiled lady” induced a female attendant to point out Walter Wilding:—