Certain dark-colour'd stains, as of blood newly spilt, He was "wide awake" In an instant; for, when only decently drunk, And hark!-what's that?— In the kitchen below-what the deuce are they at? Of her wrist, And her great mutton fist, The edge of the weapon sounds shriller and louder !— Had not made Blogg perspire Half so much, or a dose of the best James's powder.- The horrid old ruffian comes, cat-like creeping; For Blogg, when he'd once ascertain'd that there was some Flat on the bed, Apparently sleeping as sound as the dead; While, though none who look'd at him would think such a thing, Crept, stealthily still, in, And you'd not have insured his guest's life for a shilling, There are few that surpass a flush hit on the nose. Now, had I the pen of old Ossian or Homer, (Though each of these names some pronounce a misnomer, And say the first person Was call'd James M'Pherson, While, as to the second, they stoutly declare He was no one knows who, and born no one knows where,) By the lively young Peers, Who, doffing their coronets, collars, and ermines, treat More skill'd than my meek one in "fibbings" and bruises As "prime a Set-to," And "regular turn-up," as ever you knew; Not inferior in "bottom" to aught you have read of Detesting"The gloves;" And, turning, with air most disdainfully mocking, I must leave you to "fancy," The thumps and the bumps, and the ups and the downs, And the taps, and the slaps, and the raps on the crowns, That pass'd 'twixt the Husband, Wife, Bagman, and Dog, As Blogg roll'd over them, and they roll'd over Blogg; While what's call'd "The Claret” Flew over the garret : Merely stating the fact, As each other they whack'd, The Dog his old master most gallantly back'd; Making both the garçons, who came running in, sheer off, With Hippolyte's" thumb, and "Alphonse's" left ear off; Next, making a stoop on The buffeting group on The floor, rent in tatters the old woman's jupon; Might have ended at last, I'm not able to say, In came half a score Of the passengers, sailors, and one or two more She had been, in her day, A First-rate, but was then what they term a Rasée,- The little I know that concerns Navigation, Of a practice which often, in cases of robbing, Was adopted on shipboard-I think 'twas call'd "Cobbing." But the system is one Of which Sancho's exploit would increase the facility. But the Frenchman was placed I mean the old scoundrel whose actions we've traced- His consent was the last thing the men thought of asking. Was obliged to go through, With her boys, the rough discipline used by the crew, Who, before they let one of the set see the back of them, "Cobb'd" the whole party,-ay, "every man Jack of them." Moral. And now, Gentle Reader, before that I say Farewell for the present, and wish you good day, If ever you travel, like Anthony Blogg, Be wary of strangers!-don't take too much grog!— Lastly, don't act like Blogg, who, I say it with blushing, L'Envoye. I felt so disgusted with Blogg, from sheer shame of him, Mind, it's no wish of mine, Is, (a penny will do't,)-by addressing a line APPENDIX. Since penning this stanza, a learned Antiquary The real "Bermoothes," In the Mediterranean,-now call'd Lampedosa ; Have found Prospero's "Staff;" But 'twas useless to dig, for the want of a pick or axe.- HAVE you, my most feeling, and considerate, and imaginative reader, ever taken an evening lounge, sojourn, saunter, meditation—(call it what you will) -in Greenwich Park, on a real summer's evening, when sunlight, and verdure, and decay, harmonize together, and make music to the human heart? If you have, you will know the scene I would bring before you; and if you have not, you will never waste a coming summer. I would speak, moreover, more particularly to the initiated, to those who have entered the inconvenient doorway, escaping, as it would seem, through triangular iron bars from the scattered flock of cocked-hats on broad gravelled roads, and under great globe-crowned gate-columns, and from silent though frequented cloisters into goodly meads, with hills rising, tree-crowned (pensionerlooking trees!) and with rich old brown-red buildings, yet all the grass, timber, and edifice speaking of other days and other monarchs, -all sublimed and sweetly saddened by sunshine and time! In summer, I perhaps could not thus speak of this affectingly-charming, sacred scene; but at the moment when I am writing, the north-east wind has suddenly driven me to winter in the Italy of the mind,-we all know that the mind can make its own Italy, and I choose mine, for reasons which will immediately appear, to be in my dear, old, solemn, sun-honoured, colour-chastened, hero-dotted park of Greenwich. Reader! come with me! Let us pay our mite to the Janitor that opens the open gate, and enter. The change is wondrous! Recently-but an instant ago-we were on the very loosest of gravelled roads, amidst a throng of the longest blue-flaps, the "shockingest bad hats," (all, however, three-cornered,) the most irregular apportionment of arms and eyes, the greatest variety of legs obtained from Crooked-lane (save where the leg had put in to wood, when perchance the eye was compelled to water) that every traveller here, in Kent, or in Asia, Africa, or America, saw assembled, or not assembled. To what reflections do not the passing of these stunted, distorted, crinkley-faced, battered, shattered, homely wrecks of valour and patriotism, in cartridge, not Bath-wove-lead! One man leans, with a face like a map of the world he has sailed round, beneath a huge granite gateway-and he is not all before you! No; -one eye parted company at the Nile, at the night hour, when the Orient exploded in the eyes of the shore-bordering Egyptians,—a leg had previously been tossed to a shark that hungered in the troubled and bloody waves which rolled from the Baltic around the "leviathans of the deep," close to the walls of Copenhagen!-Another hero lounges with the shortest and brownest of pipes, over the worn rail, that invariably supports a crew, over the unloading of one collier close to the Ship Tavern,-it appearing that the same age-and-curiosity-paralysed crew will never withdraw their varieties of cockedhats and blue body-flags; that the vessel is always unloading, and never will unload; that the river is running, ever running; and that the sun is in a ruby state of eternal sunset. What serene expression is in his yellow face and deeply-rivetted grey eye!--but it is the expression of a placid and protected retirement from a thousand storms, and his arm has fed the multitudinous fish off Cape Trafalgar! The feeling that I experience in seeing these lay figures of heroes, these Chantrey-charmed men by the effect of Time's sculpture power, these dreamers of the sea,-these Zobeide-people of an uneastern city,-not, however, the less silent, the less motionless, the less imagination-lustred,-is almost inexplicable. I can hardly bear to see them walk,—and a crawler is of sea things my preference, my passion. A quick little man in blue, with a regular cocked-hat, and all his arms, legs, and eyes, is my aversion! I would rather see a wooden-aided and (in battle) a reliable gentleman in yellow!-the stay of motion in this scene, the repose of colour, the pause, as it would seem, of Time, is only realized to me in the exquisite description of the Grecian urn by Keats! He would have felt, wild as my feelings seem to have run (from a Greenwich pensioner to a Grecian vase), the truth of that sentiment, "What little town by river or sea-shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Why thou art desolate can e'er return." And here I may take leave to produce a sketch of Greenwich Terrace, made some years ago. The same men are leaning over the iron rail still! eyes. "The terrace that runs along the whole range of the building, between it and the water, is pleasantly situated; but, as it does not much abound with pensioners, is by no means a striking attraction in my In the walk below it, at the edge of the water, narrow, inconvenient, and thronged with watermen, sailors, and other bronzed men, we all delighted to walk. There do the maimed and weathertried tenants of the place saunter out their indolent and late holiday of existence. There do they sit for hours, like Crabbe's Peter Ghrimes, but without his terrors, looking upon the flood. There do they lean, |