Amid the modern bustle and life of Portsmouth town there yet, happily, remain for those who care for such things some memorials of the glorious past. The old Sally Port is one of these places. There, surely, if in any place in the town, ghosts must walk, where once so many famous men, and those destined to become famous, embarked for enterprises which but too often proved the truth of the Gray’s saying, “The path of glory leads but to the grave.” The tablet affixed to this old gateway tells its history better than any eloquence. It reads, “From this place naval heroes innumerable have embarked to fight their country’s battles.” In the High Street stands not only St Thomas’ Church with its imposing memorial to the murdered Duke of Buckingham in the south chancel, and the house where the Duke was assassinated, but also the George Hotel at which Nelson spent his last hours before setting out on the cruise which ended in death and the victory of Trafalgar. Here he breakfasted on September 14, 1805. At any rate, at this time, as a contemporary writer says, “He was physically of a frail and unheroic build, being slight, sickly-looking, and weak. Moreover, ere he set forth on his last glorious voyage, dysentery and fever had already shattered his frame so much that a far less wound than he was destined to suffer would as likely as not have proved fatal.... He had a hacking cough, but there was that in his eye--fire and the unquenchable glint of genius--which, with his high and noble courage, made him yet a hero and a born leader of men and deviser of great affairs.” In Broad Street stands the Blue Posts Inn. Not, alas! the immortal hostelry of Marryat’s _Peter Simple_ and of innumerable other sea stories since his day, but a bastard growth which sprang up after the old inn was destroyed by fire in 1870. The old rhyme, which was scratched on one of the window panes, This is the Blue Postesses, Where the midshipmen leave their chestesses, Call for tea and toastesses, And, alas! forget to pay for their breakfastesses. must, we think, in its day have been one of the most quoted of all poetic efforts.