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-the pride of England, by the great waters flourishing, and the glory of the Thames. The approach to it by the river, is in the highest degree beautiful and striking. Those to whom it is familiar, pass it by without emotion; but the stranger, and especially he that knows something of its history, never refrains from warm admiration. The homage is forced from him whether he will or no, by the splendour of the noble hospital, standing so proudly upon the brink, and the greatness of the uses to which it is applied.

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Hail, noblest structure, imaged in the wave!
A nation's grateful tribute to the brave;
Hail, blest retreat, from war and shipwreck, hail !

No ostentatious charity raised that edifice to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and be lauded for it; but national justice reared it and maintains it, and national gratitude will foster it evermore. And no great thanks to it either. Like the private gratitude spoken of by the diplomatist who studied the human heart so well, it burns brightly, not so much for past benefits, but from a keen sense of those which are to come. Kindness to the worn-out veteran is one of the surest means of raising up the race of the young and vigorous to succeed him; and our nation in maintaining this hospital, is but keenly alive to its own interest after all.

As Greenwich owes all its importance to its hospital-as that edifice is not only the chief beauty, but the distinguishing characteristic of the place, and that which singles it out not only from every other town in Great Britain, but in the world, it may naturally be expected that it should receive the first notice at the hands of the topographer; but, as it is of modern growth, and the successor only of palaces that existed before its time, we will begin at the beginning, and not speak further of Greenwich Hospital, prominent though it be, until we arrive at it chronologically.

The manor of Greenwich, called in the early

records, East Greenwich, belonged formerly to the abbey of St. Peter at Ghent. At the dissolution of the alien priories, it was granted by Henry V. to the monastery of Sheen, or Richmond. It remained in the possession of the monks for a very short time, being seized by the Crown upon the disgrace of the bishop of Baieux. Henry VI. in the eleventh year of his reign, granted it to his uncle, Duke Humphrey, that Humphrey, with whom, according to the vulgar saying still in use, everybody who has no dinner is supposed to dine. Being pleased with the spot, the Duke built a palace, extending, with its various courts, from the river to the hill on which the Observatory now stands: there is a good view of it in Hasted's "History of Kent." It was named Placentia, and sometimes the Plaisaunce. Upon his death it became the property of the Crown. Edward IV. enlarged the Park, and restocked it with deer, and then bestowed it as a residence upon his queen, Elizabeth Widville. Henry VII. occasionally resided in it; and Henry VIII. at one period of his reign was so much attached to it, that he passed more of his time at Greenwich than at any other of his palaces. He adorned and enlarged it at considerable expense, and made it so mag

nificent, as to cause Leland, the antiquary, to exclaim with rapture unbecoming an antiquary, as he gazed upon it

How bright the lofty seat appears,

Like Jove's great palace, paved with stars!
What roofs! what windows charm the eye!
What turrets, rivals of the sky!

It should be said, however, that the antiquary wrote his praises in Latin, and that these verses are the translation of Hasted, the historian of Kent. Henry VIII. was born in the palace, and there also was born his daughter Mary, as well as his great daughter Elizabeth-the circumstance connected with Greenwich, that of all others rendered it most dear to the mind of Samuel Johnson, who exclaims in the introduction to his Satire upon London

On Thames's bank in silent thought we stood,
Where Greenwich smiles upon the silver flood,
Struck with the seat that gave Eliza birth,
We kneel and kiss the consecrated earth,
In pleasing dreams that blissful age renew,
And call Britannia's glories back to view.

A great fallacy of the lexicographer as to the age of either Henry or Elizabeth being a blissful one; but let that pass. It was a merry one for the aristocracy of the court in some respects, especially during the time of Henry, and had there been any safety for their heads, they at least would have had but little to complain of,

whatever might have been said by the people. Tilts and tournaments succeeded each other with great rapidity while he wielded the sceptre. On Shrove Tuesday, 1526, the King, with eleven knights, fought against the Marquis of Exeter with the like number in Greenwich Park; upon which occasion Sir Francis Bryan, one of the combatants, had his eye poked out by the point of a spear. While the King was indulging himself with sports of this kind, he published an edict at Greenwich against the less costly amusements of his subjects. "Commissions," says Stowe, "were awarded into every shire for the execution of the same, so that in all places tables, dice, cards, and bowls, were taken and burned; but when young men were restrained of these games and pastimes, some fell to drinking, some to ferreting of other men's conies, and stealing of deer in parks, and other unthriftiness." But Henry was not an enemy to the amusements of the people, provided they were conformable to his own notions; and his tournaments were visited by thousands of his subjects, who had free ingress and egress while they lasted, and ample accommodation besides. His Christmas festivals which he held in Placentia, were no less splendid than his exhibitions of chivalric sports. Revels, masques, disguisings, and banquets

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