Here is Greenwich, and here is the façade and the cupola of the sailor's hospital, with a semicircle of wooded hills in the background. We have left the fog behind us in London, and the evening sun looks out from the clouds as if he would say--"I am alive and in health, for all that the Londoners believe me to be ailing or in _articulo mortis_." Our boat rushes past the "Dreadnought"--we touch the shore--the engines are stopped--we are at our journey's end.
We stand on the beautiful terrace in front of the Hospital, the house in which Queen Elizabeth loved to dwell, and here at this very spot her courtiers used to take their walks. Their gold embroidered cloaks are gone, and in their stead you see long blue brass-buttoned coats on the mutilated or decrepid bodies of old sailors. A blue coat, a white neckcloth, shoes, white stockings, and a large three-cornered hat with gold lace--that is the uniform of the Invalids, who pass the evening of their lives in this delightful place.
Greenwich Hospital presents the most beautiful architectural group of modern England. Take the most gifted architect of the world, bandage his eyes, put him on the terrace on which we stand, and then show him this splendid building, and he will at once tell you that this is and must be a royal palace. How could he ever suspect that all this splendour of columns and cupolas is destined to shelter a couple of thousand of poor, decrepid sailors! But that it does shelter them is honorable to the founders and to the English nation.
Go to Germany, enquire in the largest and most powerful states what they have done for their disabled soldiers. There is an Hotel of Invalides at Vienna; for Austria, too, has her mutilated living monuments of the Napoleonic wars and the wars against Hungary. But compare that Austrian _Invalidenhaus_ with this asylum for British sailors. A low, unwholesome site, courtyards alike inaccessible to sunlight and air, cloistered corridors, bare, uncomfortable chambers, vast, chilly saloons, and a population of old soldiers stinted even in the common necessaries of life. It is a great piece of good luck for such a pensioner to obtain the post of watchman in one of the Emperor's parks, where, for a few more florins per annum, he has the privilege of waging war against dogs and ragged little boys. Go to Prussia, that military kingdom, look about in that splendid city of Berlin, and do not for mercy's sake refuse your penny to those old men, in shabby uniforms with medals dangling from their button-holes, who hold out their caps with one hand while they grind old rickety organs with the other--if indeed they have two hands left! These are the veterans who made Prussia great and powerful. In return for their services, they have the inestimable privilege of begging pence from travelling Englishmen.