110 THE BRIGHTON ROAD 



but it is now the one quiet and unassuming spot in a 

 narrow, a busy, and a noisy street. Fronting the main 

 thoroughfare, it blocks " improvement " ; occupying 

 a site grown so valuable, its destruction, and the sale 

 of the ground for building upon, would immensely 

 profit the good Whitgift's noble charity. What would 

 Whitgift himself do ? When we have advanced still 

 farther into the Unknown and can communicate with 

 the sane among the departed, instead of the idiot 

 spirits who can do nothing better than levitate chairs 

 and tables, rap silly messages, and play monkey- 

 tricks — when we can ring up whom we please at the 

 Paradise or the Inferno Exchange, as the case may be, 

 we shall be able to ascertain the will of Pious 

 Benefactor?, and much bitterness will cease out of the 

 land. 



Meanwhile the old building for the time survives, 

 and its name, " The Hospital of the Holy Trinity," 

 inscribed high up on the wall, seems strange and 

 reverend amid the showy shop-signs of a latter-day 

 commerce. 



There is, of course, no reason why, if widening is to 

 take place, the opposite side of the street should not 

 be set back, and, indeed, any one standing in that 

 street will readily perceive it to be that side which 

 should be demolished, to make a straighter and a 

 broader thoroughfare. It is therefore quite evident 

 that the agitation for demolishing the Hospital 

 is unreal and artificial, and only prompted by 

 greed for the site. 



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 dot 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, 



