Now such is the real Greenwich pensioner. When I say _real_, I mean one who abhors London worse than he does a Frenchman; who thinks there is nothing to be seen in it, unless, indeed, it be Nelson’s tomb, in St Paul’s, or the “Ship” public-house, in Tooley Street. London is to him a never-failing source of merriment; that is, whilst he is out of it. He sits at Greenwich, and looking as sagely as a starling ere he snaps at a fly, at the piled-up clouds of smoke hanging over the metropolis, or, indeed, almost propped upon its chimney-pots, and, stretching forth his stick, significantly points them out to his former shipmates, asking them if they do not think “there is something dark over there—something of an ‘ox-eye’ to the west?” He, indeed, never ventures to London, unless it be for a fresh supply of tobacco, or to pay a quarterly visit to his grand-daughter, the upper housemaid in a gentleman’s family,—and who, indeed, thinks with horror upon his call, because the neighbours laugh at the cocked hat and the shoe-buckles of her relative; but principally because Richard, the baker’s young man, declares he hates all sailors. The visit is never a very lengthened one, especially if the girl lives far to the west; for her grandfather has to call upon Will Somebody, who set up, with his prize-money, a public-house in Wapping. So off he starts, hurries up the Strand, touches his hat from a point of principle as he nears Somerset House; puts out more canvas, and away for Temple Bar. The pensioner has not yet, however, sat for his picture.