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THE SEA. 



hospital in the narrower sense of the word, and that there will be less freedom of ingress 

 and egress for them henceforth; but this is only part of a more general feeling in 

 favour of liberty among them, at which nobody who has inquired into their condition 

 can wonder. The authorities at Greenwich Hospital have contrived to make a palace 

 as dull as a prison. The men have had no amusements but a library inconveniently 

 furnished. They have not been allowed to have flower-pots in their windows, nor to 

 receive friends and visitors in private ; and it is not many years ago since they were 

 forbidden to walk on the terraces. Some of the punishments, too such as being compelled to 

 wear a yellow collar and do scavengers' work have been harsh and injudicious. All 



GREENWICH HOSPITAL. 



these things have combined with the monastic character of the place to giv r e a character 

 of ennui and listlessness to the Greenwich pensioner's life, which must have struck every 

 observing visitor. Dulness has been relieved within the walls chiefly by temptation without. 

 " Since the age when Queen Mary pictured to herself Greenwich as a place of pious 

 repose, where the sailor might end his days in the fear of God, it has become the 

 favourite haunt of the pleasure-loving cockney an emporium of shrimps, a reservoir of 

 beer. Those quaint figures the ' geese ' and ' blue-bottles ' of local slang lounging about 

 under the trees of the park, and loitering through the streets in the dress of another age, 

 have been regarded by the holiday-maker from the metropolis as parts of the amusements 

 of the place. They have been paid for yarns in drink and stray shillings, and have found 

 the doctrine that sailors lived only for grog and tobacco accepted by their admirers as one 

 of the glories of the British navy. It has been well remarked that, as a whole, the old 

 fellows have been more decent in their lives than we had a right to expect under the 



