It is a solitude amid the throng, remarkable in the collegiate character of its walls of dark and aged red brick, pierced only by the doorway and as jealously as possible by the few mullioned windows. Once within the outer portal, ornamented overhead with the arms of the See of Canterbury and eloquent with the motto _Qui dat pauperi non indigebit_, the stranger has entered from a striving into a calm and equable world. It is, as old Aubrey quaintly puts it, "a handsome edifice, erected in the manner of a college, by the Right Reverend Father in God, John Whitgift, late Archbishop of Canterbury." The dainty quadrangle, set about with grass lawns and bright flowers, is formed on three sides by tiny houses of two floors, where dwell the poor brothers and sisters of this old foundation: twenty brothers and sixteen sisters, who, beside lodging, receive each £40 and £30 a year respectively. They enjoy all the advantages of the Hospital so long as of good behaviour, but "obstinate heresye, sorcerye, any kinde of charmmynge, or witchcrafte" are punished by the statutes with expulsion. [Illustration: THE DINING HALL, WHITGIFT HOSPITAL.] The fourth side of the quadrangle is occupied by the Hall, the Warden's rooms, and the Chapel, all in very much the same condition as at their building. The old oak table in the Hall is dated 1614, and much of the stained glass is of sixteenth century date. But it is in the Warden's rooms, above, that the eye is feasted with old woodwork, ancient panelling, black with lapse of time, quaint muniment chests, curious records, and the like. These were the rooms specially reserved for his personal use during his lifetime by the pious Archbishop Whitgift. Here is a case exhibiting the original titles to the lands on which the Hospital is built, and with which it is endowed; formidable sheets of parchment, bearing many seals, and, what does duty for one, a gold angel of Edward VI. These are ideal rooms; rooms which delight with their unspoiled sixteenth-century air. The sun streams through the western windows over their deep embrasures, lighting up so finely the darksome woodwork into patches of brilliance that there must be those who envy the Warden his lodging, so perfect a survival of more spacious days. [Illustration: The CHAPEL, Hospital of the Holy Trinity.] A little chapel duly completes the Hospital, and here is not pomp of carving nor vanity of blazoning, for the good Archbishop, mindful of economy, would none of these. The seats and benches are contemporary with the building, and are rough-hewn. On the western wall hangs the founder's portrait, black-framed and mellow, rescued from the boys of the Whitgift schools ere quite destroyed, and on the other walls are the portrait of a lady, supposed to be the Archbishop's niece, and a ghastly representation of Death as a skeleton digging a grave. But all these things are seen but dimly, for the light is very feeble. XII