little village of
Greenwich, straggling at the foot of the hill, approaching closely to
the palace, and then wandering along the great Dover and London road,
formed a more pleasant object than it does now that it has been
magnified into a great and populous town. Many wooden cottages nested
under the Park walls, and sent their smoke curling through the foliage
of the fine trees that formed a bold, rich back-ground. The palace,
extending its squares and courts along the river's brink, gave an air of
dignity to the whole scene; while the tinkling music of the sheep-bells,
echoing from the heath, lent to it a soft and harmonising effect. On the
river, in the extreme distance, an English vessel was towing up some of
the Spanish prizes which the gallant Blake had forwarded to their future
home: they trailed the water heavily and gloomily, like captives as they
were; and their dismantled and battered aspect afforded ample subject
for discourse to a group of old sailors, who, though not yet possessed
of their Palace-Hospital, found many convenient dwellings in the
village, and added not a little to the picturesque appearance of the
hill, as, congregated in a small party, they handed a rude spy-glass
from one to another,

"And told how ships were won."

"Ah!" said one veteran, "I heard old Blake myself say, soon after his
Highness was made the same as a king, and many lubberly scoundrels put
up their backs at it--'Boys,' says he, and, my eyes! how nobly he does
stand upon the deck o' his own ship, the Triumph!--'Boys,' says he, 'it
isn't for us to mind state affairs, but keep foreigners from fooling
us.' D--n it, _that_'s what I call English."

"So it is," continued another, whose weather-beaten body was supported
on a pair of wooden legs, and who had just joined the little party of
which Robin made one; "so it is, Jack, and what _I_ call English, worth
ten books full of other lingo; wasn't I with him in Fifty-three, when,
with only twelve vessels, he beat Van Tromp, who had seventy ships of
the line and three hundred merchantmen under convoy? and hadn't the
Triumph seven hundred shot in her hull? Well, though it was there I lost
my precious limbs, I don't grudge them, not I: it's as well to go to the
fish as to the worms, and any how we have the king's pension."

"Jemmy," said a waggish-looking sailor, with only one eye and half an
arm, twirling some tobacco in his mouth at the same time--"Jemmy, it's
rum talking about