ital of
Greenwich lay within the cast of a stone. The crimson flag was waving on
the western turret, just as it waved in May, and so, with his two wooden
legs projecting at right angles to his body, sat alone, on the same
bench, the lone old pensioner. I seemed to have been sleeping for three
months. I felt sad, and knew not why. How ideal is the reality of life!
and the inexpressive cause of grief is the consciousness of that truth.

The sailors, as they furled the sails, talked of home. The deer and
fawn, ceasing to ruminate, viewed their new country with surprise; but
Jacko going into Sailor's hutch, begged, without doubt, to know if he
might ride through the town on his back; and Greenwich, like Brundusium,
was,

"longae finis chartaeque viaeque."

As all men are not of the same stature, so their minds differ in the
means of accepting knowledge, or entertainment, and to please every one
is a difficult thing. To hope, therefore, that I should afford amusement
to all who read these pages, would be to aspire for that which has not
fallen to the lot of any one; but if out of the incongruity of opinions
I have expressed, be they ever so weak, or opposed to each other,
instruction may be taken, then I shall not have striven without a
result. For me, I have no moral lesson to teach; but by writing, to
repeat what I have witnessed, and by that repetition to impart to others
those things which, sheltered, though of the same world, by a different
sky, and shadowed by other customs, were pleasing to my mind and sight.

My task is done; and, like a dream, is dreamt the recollection of human
things already changed and ever changing. The remembrance of the
interesting country through which I have been travelling shall abide by
me always; for, encouraged by the desire to speak and muse, as I do now,
of the hardy, freely happy, and contented sons of its mountains, I first
learned that no greater blessing could be granted than a life of
honourable industry, and that, pine who might beneath the infliction of
mental or bodily exertion, I had known the exalted destiny of creation
in the effort to be useful. Like an exile turning to take a last glance
at the blue outlines of his native land, I, too, have lingered to look
back; yet the pleasant retrospection of three happy months is at an end;
and I now dream of its delight as one who feels that, in the swift
transition of existence, such peace of mind can never come again.