Making our way down the river, we come to the Botanical Gardens, belonging to the Apothecaries' Company of London, where all manner of simples have been cultivated since the year 1673. The ground was first enclosed in 1686, and some of the old walls remained until the alterations consequent on the making of the Embankment. An ancient look still hangs about the prim walks and orderly beds, where one seems to sniff the aromatics of departed generations. Old houses cluster round, and peer with blinking windows into the old nursery of herbs. In the centre is a statue by Rysbrack of Sir Hans Sloane, set up in 1733, in consideration of benefits conferred on the gardens by the great physician; and near the southern boundary is a rugged cedar, planted, together with another, in 1685. More interesting to the general public is Chelsea Hospital, the grounds of which should be reckoned among the parks of London. The Chelsea Pensioner, with his scarlet gabardine, flaming along the ways like a travelling fire, is a figure so peculiar to this neighbourhood that one scarcely ever sees it anywhere else. The retired soldier has a noble dwelling-house in the massive yet comely structure which Sir Christopher Wren reared for him. There is no finer specimen of brick architecture, with stone for the decorations, than the edifice which Nell Gwynne is said, by a doubtful tradition, to have assisted in founding. One might even detect a professional analogy in the style of building. The wings stretch out like troops in column; the main body is the army in mass, compact, steadfast, and impenetrable. But the battered old men have done with fighting now; they have come here to nurse their wounds and aches, and the prevailing sentiment is, as it should be, a blessed and a soothing calm. Within those iron gates, having the grounds and the river on one side, and the quiet old Queen's Road on the other, it is almost like a sanctuary. The sunlight falls asleep in the quadrangles and passages. Caught between wall and wall, detained by trees, reflected from numerous angles, it seems to double back upon itself, and fill the air with somnolent heat and glow. Here is a true place of rest; on the edge of the great city, yet sequestered; substantial, ceremonious, prescriptive; shadowed with greenery, bright with flowers and lawns, lulled with the memory of ancient days, the tender comradeship of the past. Is it not right that all wayorn men should taste a little of the lotos-eater's life ere they depart?-- "'Courage!' he said, and pointed towards the land; 'This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.' In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon."[7] Round the precincts of Chelsea Hospital it seems as if it were always Sunday.