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And why not the singer,
Who never will blink,
Be indulged with a cup
Of occasional drink?

Chorus. We will drink and be merry,
To chase away pain,

And now the can's empty,
Let's fill it again!

On repeating the last words, they all turned a supplicating eye towards the landlady, whose benevolent heart could not resist the appeal. She accordingly gave directions to refil the flagon, and fee each of them with a shilling. After drinking health and happiness and a merry Christmas to all the family, and promising to get a new tune ready for the following year, they bent their steps towards the door of a wealthier habitation, where, though they may have partaken of more delicate cheer, they could not have met with a more hospitable entertainment.

VISIONS IN THE SUNSET. A SONNET.

BY REGINALD AUGUSTINE.

How calm, but how magnificent the hush
O'er Summer's path reposes !-there should be
Elysian fountains, with their golden gush,
And rainbow spires, within the chrystal sea.
Sublime, amid the sunny blazonry

Of yon fair cloud, should beauteous Milton smile,
And Shakspeare, lord of his enchanted isle,
Muse, o'er his harp, beneath the magic tree!
Oh, child of fancy! if the mellow lute

Pours out its music o'er thy slumbering eyes,
And visions, deep and blissful, keep thee mute,
On seraph's radiant pinions thou shouldst rise,
Wander, amid their glow, through groves of fruit,
And taste the streams that laugh o'er Paradise!
Deal

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THE GREENWICH PENSIONER.

A Greenwich pensioner! Did any of my readers ever ponder on that strange composition of battered humanity and blue serge? Did they never feel a something approaching very near gratitude on passing, in the metropolis, a Greenwich pensioner, who, with his honest, carved-out, unabashed front, looks as bluntly and as wonderingly at the bustle and splendor around him, as does an unsophisticated wether suddenly removed from South Downs to Cheapside, whilst shaking his woollen coat beneath the whip of the coachman to the Lord Mayor. What a mixture of gravity and wonderment is in the poor brute's countenance! how, with its meek, uplifted head, it stares at the effulgent vehicle,-runs leaping at the coachwheels, mistaking them for hurdles-falls, awe-struck, back, at the gilt and beavered greatness of the footman's cocked hat -then, suddenly awakened from its amazement by the lurcher's teeth or the driver's stick, makes an unlucky spring of some three feet into the air, catches a glance of its figure in the mirrored walls of a silk mercer's, and, startled at the sight, dashes through the first court,-carrying perhaps a few yards upon its back, some red-faced, nankeen-gaitered little stock-broker; whose spattered small-clothes are for a time unregarded, in the mighty rush of drovers, butchers, dogs, and idlers.

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 neverfailing 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 on 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.

We have all read of crabs being despoiled of their claws, locusts of their entrails, and turtles of their brains, receiving in lieu thereof a pellet of cotton, and yet retaining life, and appearing, in the words of the experimentalizing and softhearted naturalist " very lively and comfortable."*

Now,

the real Greenwich pensioner distances all these; he is, indeed, an enigma: nature knows not what to make of him. He hath been suspended, like a schoolboy's bob-cherry, a hundred times over the chaps of death, and yet still been snatched away by the hand of providence, to whom, indeed, his many hurts and dangers have especially endeared him. Ye of the "land-interest," ye soft-faced young sparks, who think with terror upon a razor on a frosty morning,-ye suffering old gentlemen, who pause at a linen-draper's, and pass the flannel between your fingers, as time verges towards October,-ye martyrs to a winter cough-ye racked with a quarterly tooth-arche-all ye of household ailings, look upon this hacked, shivered piece of clay, this Greenwich pensioner: consider of how many of his powers he is despoiled; see where the cutlass and the boarding-pike have ploughed up and pierced his flesh; see where the bullet has glanced, singeing by; and when you have reckoned up, if they are to reckoned, his many scars-above all, look at his hard, contented, weather-barnacled face, and then, gentle spectators, complain of your rheums, your joint-twitchings, and your corns!

Why, this Greenwich pensioner is in himself a record of the last forty years' war. He is a breathing volume of naval history not an event but is somewhere indented in him with steel or led he has been the stick in which the English Mars has notched his cricket-matches, when twenty-four pounders were balls, and mainmasts wickets. See, in his blinded

*See Vaillant and Redi.

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