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 ship-mates, 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.

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 soft-hearted 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 school-boy's bobcherry, 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 linendraper'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-ache -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 be 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 lead 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 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 labour, 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-inquiry, 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

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, whereever 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 cabbagemarkets 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-Monthly and European Magazine.

THE DEAF COUPLE;

OR, INHUMANITY PUNISHED. A KNOCKING was heard at the outer door of a small cottage, standing by a dreary and lone wood in Northumberland, and a faint voice begging, "For God's sakė, give shelter from this hoarfrost of night! It has almost frozen my poor old limbs. I pray you-1 beseech you-I conjure you, deny me not this boon of charity!" Frequent were his agonised supplications-loud and urgent. The poor old gamekeeper, for that was the occupation of the cottager, was deaf; but frequently did he ask his wife, if she heard not somebody at the door of the cottage. "Yes," says she, "it's the drifting snow, beating up against the door, or the howling wind." But her heart was harder than the hoar-frost itself. Oft was the supplication repeated, with all the energetic force that would have melted the heart of stone; but she was too deaf;-yes, it was a deafness the most inveterate, that of the heart. She was deaf to humanity-deaf to the most deadly cry of grief-deaf to every thing but self. Old Mortimore again said, "Surely there is a knocking at our little door. I'll get up and see." "Be still, deaf dotard, do! — and do not wisp the clothes about. Who do you think would be abroad this cold winter's night, save the witch and wizard, or some fiend of night? hoary head, and hold your peace." Another, and another appeal was made to her callous heart; but it was steeled against humanity. At last the voice of the poor applicant died upon the wintry blast, and the deaf couple sunk

Cover up your

cap, and his staff. By this time the old dame was heard emerging from her warm bed, and making use of epithets as if she had been the queen of that dreadful night. The gamekeeper called, "Light, dame! light, dame!" "Yes, old dotard, to light thee to perdition!—What fiend of night have you got there?" cramming the light in the face of the stranger. "A soldier," faintly uttered poor old Mortimore, who had by this time put on his spectacles, and was wiping away the white snow from the furrowed cheeks of the stranger. "Poor fellow ! - he is dead?" "So much the better!" said she, “then he's at rest.—Search his knapsack, and see what's there!" "What!" said old Mortimore, 66 rob the dead?"-God forbid !" "Then stand on one side, and I'll soon see what he's got;-why, he don't want it now he's dead. Perhaps you may find as much as will pay your rent." "Fie! fie! dame !-what has got hold of thee of late years?" "The devil, I suppose !" "I fear so, indeed." She was about to search the knapsack, when the stranger gave a loud and deep groan. It was that of the spirit's departure, when it leaves the mortal body and ascends to its Creator. This last dying groan for a time arrested the diabolical plunderer in her infamous career, and she trembled from head to foot, and at last sunk upon a bench. She had no cares for others; she herself deserved none; nor did old Mortimore take any notice of her till he had made a good fire; he then poured into her mouth that liquor which the closed lips of the stranger had refused, and she soon became sensible to a scene enough to melt the heart of adamant; for, when the gray twilight made its way through the cottage window, and played upon the face of the stranger, a wellknown scar upon the forehead soon told this inhuman woman that the poor frozen soldier, then lying dead at her feet, was no other than her son !-yes, her younger son, who had been many years from his native home, and whom she imagined to have been many years dead.

into a deep sleep, undisturbed by the further importunity of the heart-frozen soldier. Long, however, ere the twilight of day had dispelled the pitchy darkness of night, the poor old man, disturbed by the conviction that he had heard some unusual noise at the door, dreamed that he saw a poor old hoary veteran lying frozen to death at the threshold of his cottage. The features of the supposed deceased struck him as familiar; he thought that he had endeavoured to raise him, but his limbs were as stiff as the icicles that hung upon his last breath. Supposing the stranger quite dead, he let him fall again on that earth from which he had just raised him. This frightened the gamekeeper, and, in his fright, he struck his inhuman partner on the face, which soon convinced him that it was a dream, by the application of her talons to his face. The conviction pleased him, and he begged the pardon of his enraged wife for having disturbed her slumbers. Still there was something that lay heavy at his heart, and he said, "All is not right; if I cannot hear (worse luck !), thank God he has spared my sight:" and he was about to get up, when the ire of his wife burst forth in a rhapsody of querulous vengeance; and, after threatening him if he again disturbed her repose, she said, "What ails you, old dotard, to-night?some fiend haunting-some spell teazing your old barren mind: sleep while you can." Here she covered his hoary head, which had been raised from his homely pillow to catch the supposed sound of distress. He again dropped off to sleep. Still the same appearances came before his imagination, with such palpable demonstration of reality, that he, in the agony of his mind, sprang from his bed, and, in an instant, was at his cottage door; on opening which a human body fell into the room, and with it prodigious heaps of snow. The old gamekeeper conceiving, by the precipitate entrance of the unknown, that some treachery was premeditated, seized and cocked his gun, and cried, "Help, dame!-help!" Observing, however, the inanimate position of the fallen, he rested his gun upon his and felt the cheek of the stranger. It was deadly cold-his teeth were clenched in death-his hands fast closed-pulse he had none. Groping about to find a light, he stumbled over a knapsack, his |

arm,

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