Greenwich Hospital is, indeed, a palace of the poor. On the terrace, between its wings, one cannot but be impressed with a sense of the greatness of a nation which thus lodges the humblest of its worn-out defenders. The old pensioners, hobbling about, in their blue uniforms, and cocked-hats, move your profound respect. Their wounds, and battered visages, seem to speak of storm and shipwreck, and of shell and broadsides, in every climate under heaven. They can tell wonderful things of Nelson and of Collingwood; and all seem to address you, like Burns’ hero, with the tale, “How they served out their trade When the Moro low was laid, At the sound of the drum.” In “the Painted Hall,” which is full of pictures of naval battles, one sees how terribly their pensions have been earned. There, too, is shown the coat worn by Nelson, when he fell, and it is stained with his blood. It was a comfort to turn from this temple of the Maritime Mars, to that of the Prince of Peace. The old sailors have a superb chapel, elaborately adorned, and furnished with an altar-piece, by West, “the shipwreck of St. Paul.” From a little book which I picked up in Paris, written by a Frenchman, and a Romanist, I gather that the service, in such places, in England, is very impressive, and that the contrast, in France, is not in favour of the Romish religion. He describes the chaunting, and apparent devotion of the soldiers, as very striking; and he seems to have been especially struck with their responses to the Ten Commandments. He adds—“all that would make us laugh in France:” and he goes on to say—“if it be answered that our soldiers are at liberty to go to mass, I reply, that’s true; but for all that, a young conscript, religiously educated at home, would be ridiculed so unsparingly for continuing in his pious habits, that he could not long resist the bad examples of his comrades.” At Greenwich, the Bible and Prayer-book are the constant companions of many an old salt; and bad as all armies and navies must be, I could not but think that there is a great advantage, in the _morale_, of Chelsea and Greenwich, as compared with the Invalides.