buted its stores. The Thames water ferments and purifies itself: in its state of fermentation it is inflammable. St. Paul's and the Monument are the main objects in this reach. Below the bridges is the Tower of London, and a forest of shipping: here indeed we saw how truly this city may be called the modern Tyre. Wharfs and warehouses extend in this direction, far beyond any part of the eastern city which I had explored. New docks upon a great scale are nearly completed in a marsh, called the Isle of Dogs, so named, it is said, because the body of a man who bad been murdered, and buried there, was discovered by the fidelity of a dog*.

At length we came in sight of green fields and trees. The marshes of Essex, from whence London is so often covered with fogs, were on one side; the Kentish hills, not far distant, on the other; the famous observatory of Greenwich, from whence the

* The king's hounds were kept there when there was a royal palace at Greenwich.-TR.

English calculate their longitude; and the hospital, a truly noble building, worthy of the nation which has erected it, and of the purpose to which it is consecrated. The palace of the Tudors stood here.-Charles II. began to rebuild it, and William appropriated it to its present use. About 2000 disabled seamen are supported here, and boys are educated for the navy. We saw the refectory and the church: but, as in a Relicario, the place excited too much feeling to obtain much attention: we were in the asylum of those sailors, whose skill and courage are unrivalled, a race of men without fear, and as generous as they are brave. What volumes might be compiled from the tales which these old chroniclers could tell! There is not a shore in the habitable world but has been visited by some or other of these men, nor a hardship incident to human nature which some of them have not sustained.

We walked into the park, and up the

on Easter Monday, and roll down its green side, men and women promiscuously. From hence we had a noble prospect of the river, the distant shipping, and the pestilential marshes of the opposite coast. A story is told of an old native of these marshes, who carried on a thriving trade in wives. He chose them from the hillcountry, and within a few years married and buried eight, all of whom he brought home upon one horse.

LETTER LXVII.

Spanish Gravity the Jest of the English -Sunday evening described.-Society for the Suppression of Vice.-Want of Holidays-Bull-baiting.-Boxing, ONE of the great philosophers here has advanced a theory that the nervous and electric fluids are the same, both being condensed light. If this be true, sun-shine is the food of the brain; and it is thus explained why the southern nations are so much more spiritual than the English, and why they in their turn rank higher in the scale of intellect than their northern neighbours.

Spanish gravity is the jest of this people. Whenever they introduce a Spaniard upon the stage, it is to ridicule him for his pride,

his jealousy, and his mustachios. According to their notions, all our women who are not locked up in convents, are locked up at home; guarded by duennas as vigilant as dragons, and husbands, every one of whom is as fierce as the Grand Turk. They believe, also, that a Spaniard thinks it beneath his dignity ever to laugh, except when he is reading Don Quixotte; then, indeed, his muscles are permitted to relax.

I am writing upon Sunday evening, at the hour when in our cities the people are at the theatre or the bull-fight; when in every streetand village the young are dancing with their castanets, and at every door you hear the viola. What is the scene in England at this time? All public amusements are prohibited by the dæmon of Calvinism; and for private ones,-half the people seriously believe that were they to touch a card on a Sunday, they should immediately find the devil under the table, who is said to have actually appeared upon