eye is Howe's victory on the glorious first of June; that stump of what was once an arm, is Nile; and, in his wooden leg, read Trafalgar. As to his scars, a gallant action, or a desperate cutting-out, is noted in every one of them. And what was the old fellow's only wish, as, with a shattered knee, he lay in the cockpit under the surgeon's hand-what was his earnest supplication to the wet-eyed messmate who bore him down the hatchway? Simply, that he would save him one of the splinters of the mainmast of the Victory, to make of it a leg for Sundays! His wish was granted; and at Greenwich, always on the seventh day, and also on the 21st of October, is he to be seen, propped upon the inestimable splinter, which, from labor, time, and bees'-wax, has taken the dark glossiness of mahogany. What a face he has! What a certain consciousness of his superiority on his own element at times puffs out of his lip, and gives a sudden twitch to his head! But ask him in what quarter sets the wind-and note, how with his one eye, he will glance at you from top to toe; and, without ever raising his head or hand to make a self-enquiry, answers you at once, as though it was a question he was already prepared for. And so, indeed, he is; it being his first business, on rising, to consult the weather. The only way to gain his entire confidence, is at once frankly to avow your utter ignorance, and his superiority; and then, after he has leered at you with an eye, in which there is a meeting of contempt, good humour, and self-importance, he is wholly your own; and will straightway launch into the South Seas, coast along the shores of Guinea,-where, by the bye, he will tell you he once fell in love with a negress, who, however, jilted him for the cook,-and then he will launch out about Admiral Duncan-take you a voyage with him round Cape Horn, where a mermaid appeared, and sung a song to the ship's crew; and who, indeed, blew aside the musketshots that were ungallantly fired at her in requital of her melody. But our pensioner has one particular story; hear him through that, suffer yourself to be wholly astounded at its recital, and, if you were not a landman, he would instantly greet you as his dearest friend. The heroes of this same story are our pensioner and a shark,-a tremendous shark, that used to be the terror of the harbour of St. Thomas's. Upon this shark, and the piece of the mainmast of the Vic tory, is our pensioner content to rest all his importance during his life, and his fame with posterity. He will tell you that he, being caterer of the mess, let fall a piece of beef out at the port-hole, which this terrible shark received into its jaws, and twisted its body most provokingly at the delicious mouthful. Hereupon our pensioner,-it was before, he reminds you, he had lost a limb,-asks leave of the first lieutenant (for the captain was on shore) to have a bout with the shark leave being granted, all the crew are quickly in the shrouds, and upon the hammock-netting, to see Tom tackle the shark." Our pensioner now enters into a minute detail of how, having armed himself with a long knife, he jumped overboard, dived under the shark, whom he saw approaching with distended jaws, and inflicted a tremendous wound with the knife in the belly of the fish; this is repeated thrice, when the shark turns itself upon its back-a boat is let down, and both the conqueror and the conquered are quickly received upon deck. You are doubtless astonished at this; he, however, adds to your surprise, by telling you that the mess regaled off the piece of beef recovered from the fish; be more astounded at this, although mingle no doubt in your astonishment, and he will straightway promise some day to treat your eyes with a sight of a set of chequer-men, cut from the very dorsal bone of the immolated shark! To be the hearer of a sailor's tale, is something like undergoing the ancient ordeal of red-hot ploughshares; be innocent of unbelief, and you may, as was held, journey in safety; doubt the smallest point, and you are quickly withered into nought. What an odd contrast to his early life is the state of a Greenwich pensioner! It is as though a part of the angry and foaming sea should lie stagnant in a bathing-tub. All his business is to recount his former adventures-to plod about, and look with a disdainful eye at trees, and brick and mortar; or, when he would indulge in a serious fit of spleen, to walk down to the river's side, and let his gall feed upon the mishaps of London apprentices, who, fearless of consequences, may have ventured some five miles from home in not " built wherry." A Greenwich pensioner, fresh from sea, is a most preposterous creature; he gets up every morning for a week, a month, and still finds himself in the same place; he knows not what to make of it; he feels the strangeness of his a trim ocean. situation, and would, had he the patience and the wit, liken himself to a hundred unsettled things. Compare him to a hippopotamus in a gentleman's park, and he would tell you, he had in his day seen a hippopotamus, and then, with a goodnatured grunt, acquiesce in the resemblance; or to a jollyboat in a flower-garden; or to a sea-gull in the cage of a canary; or to a porpoise upon a hearth-rug; or to a boatswain's whistle in a nursery; or to a marling-spike in a milliner's work-room; or a tar-barrel in a confectioner's; with any one or all of these misplaced articles would our unsettled pensioner sympathize, until time shall have reconciled him to his asylum; and even then, his fancy, like the shells upon our mantel-piece, will sound of the distant and the dangerous 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. Shakspeare has compared England to "a swan's nest" in the "world's pool:" let us be nautical in our similies, 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 trienniel 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. SUCCESSFUL ALCHYMY. Many men have spent much time and money in search of the philosophers' stone, but, failing in their experiments, they have abandoned the delusive science in despair, having metamorphosed their gold into poverty and rags. Hence, several writers have had the temerity to assert, that the object of their pursuit was chimerical,-that they had been deluded by visionary expectations, and that a transmutation is impossible. With all due respect to these learned gentlemen, I must beg to dissent from their sage opinions, well knowing that the art has been practised for several years with the most undeviable success, both in London and in the country. There are at this moment several companies in the metropolis, who cultivate this science, with the utmost advantage; while solitary individuals, having found the grand elixir, decline all associations to establish their fortunes and their fame. Of these individuals and companies, swarms may be found at Gray's Inn, the Temple, Lincoln's Inn, and Doctors' Commons. The materials on which they work are quite simple; and the process chiefly commands attention by astonishing effects. They use neither crucibles nor retorts in their laboratories, but are rarely disappointed in the expected result of their daily experiments. A few drops of common ink mixed up with a specific quantity of law verbiage, and a very small portion of constitutional spirit, spread over a piece of paper, and left to dry, will in a few days be metamorphosed into sterling silver. The same ingredients spread upon parchment, when the operative alchemist has on a black gown and a wig, that make him somewhat resemble a bashaw with three tails, may, with equal ease, be transmuted into sterling gold. To give effect to this process, the artists, sometimes, with a little verbal legerdemain, raise an artificial fire, to excite the astonishment and admiration of the spectators. During this time the composition is maturing to perfection, and almost immediately after, the pure gold begins to flow. This the artist secures, and with it fills both his coffer and his pockets. To prevent the trade from being suppressed by act of parliament, or these manufactories of gold and silver being forfeited to the king, these wary gentlemen call themselves solicitors and counsellors, and by these names they are known throughout the country. ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND. I saw that loved one lying dead, That one whose memory now I bless, But when the sable hearse drew nigh, That marks we've left a world of ill, ALLAH. |