by way of pointing a remark; and the by-standers immediately glowed like so many hot coals, and would probably have consumed the offender in their wrath, had he not effected his retreat.  But the most sacred objects of all are two of Nelson’s coats, under separate glass cases.  One is that which he wore at the Battle of the Nile, and it is now sadly injured by moths, which will quite destroy it in a few years, unless its guardians preserve it as we do Washington’s military suit, by occasionally baking it in an oven.  The other is the coat in which he received his death-wound at Trafalgar.  On its breast are sewed three or four stars and orders of knighthood, now much dimmed by time and damp, but which glittered brightly enough on the battle-day to draw the fatal aim of a French marksman.  The bullet-hole is visible on the shoulder, as well as a part of the golden tassels of an epaulet, the rest of which was shot away.  Over the coat is laid a white waistcoat with a great blood-stain on it, out of which all the redness has utterly faded, leaving it of a dingy yellow hue, in the threescore years since that blood gushed out.  Yet it was once the reddest blood in England,—­Nelson’s blood!

The hospital stands close adjacent to the town of Greenwich, which will always retain a kind of festal aspect in my memory, in consequence of my having first become acquainted with it on Easter Monday.  Till a few years ago, the first three days of Easter were a carnival-season in this old town, during which the idle and disreputable part of London poured itself into the streets like an inundation of the Thames,—­as unclean as that turbid mixture of the offscourings of the vast city, and overflowing with its grimy pollution whatever rural innocence, if any, might be found in the suburban neighborhood.  This festivity was called Greenwich Fair, the final one of which, in an immemorial succession, it was my fortune to behold.

If I had bethought myself of going through the fair with a note-book and pencil, jotting down all the prominent objects, I doubt not that the result might have been a sketch of English life quite as characteristic and worthy of historical preservation as an account of the Roman Carnival.  Having neglected to do so, I remember little more than a confusion of unwashed and shabbily dressed people, intermixed with some smarter figures, but, on the whole, presenting a mobbish appearance such as we never see in our own country.  It taught me to understand why Shakspeare, in speaking of a crowd, so often alludes to its attribute of evil odor.  The common people of England, I am afraid, have no daily familiarity with even so necessary a thing as a washbowl, not to mention a bathing-tub.  And furthermore, it is one mighty difference between them and us, that every man and woman on our side of the water has a working-day suit and a holiday suit, and is occasionally as fresh as a rose, whereas, in the good old country, the griminess of his labor or squalid habits clings forever to the individual, and gets to be a part of his personal substance.  These are broad facts, involving great corollaries and dependencies.  There are really, if you stop to think about it, few sadder spectacles in the world than a ragged coat or a soiled and shabby gown, at a festival.