like the shells upon our mantelpiece, will sound of the distant and the dangerous ocean. At Greenwich, however, the mutilated old sailor has time enough to indulge in the recollection of his early days, and, with what wisdom he may, to make up his mind to meet in another world those whom his arm may have sent thither long before. Death, at length, gently lays the veteran upon his back—his last words, as the sailor puts his withered hand upon his heart, are “All’s well,” and sea and earth have passed away. His body, which had been for forty years a bulwark to the land, now demands of it but “two paces of the vilest earth”; and if aught could spring from the tomb characteristic of its inmate, from the grave of the pensioner would arise the stout, unbending oak—it would be his fitting monument; and the carolling of the birds in its branches would be his loud, his artless epitaph. The Greenwich pensioner, wherever we meet with him, is a fine, quaint memento of our national greatness, and our fortunate locality. We should look upon him as the representative of Neptune, and bend our spirit towards him accordingly. But that is not sufficient; we have individual acknowledgments to make to him for the comforts of a long safety. Let us but consider, as we look at his wooden supporter, that if it had not been for his leg the cannon-ball might have scattered us in our tea parlour—the bullet which deprived him of his orb of vision might have stricken _Our Village_ from our hand whilst ensconced in our study; the cutlass which cleaved his shoulder might have demolished our china vase, or our globe of golden fish:—instead of which, hemmed round by such walls of stout and honest flesh, we have lived securely, participating in every peaceful and domestic comfort, and neither heard the roar of the cannon nor seen its smoke. Shakespeare has compared England to “a swan’s nest” in the “world’s pool”: let us be nautical in our similes, and liken her to a single lemon kernel in a huge bowl of punch: who is it that has prevented the kernel from being ladled down the throat of despotism, from becoming but an atom of the great, loathsome mass?—our Greenwich pensioner. Who has kept our houses from being transformed into barracks and our cabbage markets into parades?—again, and again, let it be answered, the Greenwich pensioner. Reader, if the next time you see the tar, you should perchance have with you your wife and smiling family, think that if their tenderness has never been shocked by scenes of blood and terror, you owe such quietude to a Greenwich pensioner. Indeed, I know not if a triennial progress of the Greenwich establishment through the whole kingdom would not be attended with the most beneficial effects—fathers would teach their little ones to lisp thanksgivings unto God that they were born in England, as reminded of their happy superiority by the withered form of every Greenwich pensioner. [Illustration]