It is built of marble, or very
light-colored stone, in the classic style, with pillars and porticos,
which (to my own taste, and, I fancy, to that of the old sailors)
produce but a cold and shivery-effect in the English climate. Had I
been the architect, I would have studied the characters, habits, and
predilections of nautical people in Wapping, Rotherhithe, and the
neighborhood of the Tower, (places which I visited in affectionate
remembrance of Captain Lemuel Gulliver, and other actual or mythological
navigators,) and would have built the hospital in a kind of ethereal
similitude to the narrow, dark, ugly, and inconvenient, but snug and
cozy homeliness of the sailor boarding-houses there. There can be no
question that all the above attributes, or enough of them to satisfy an
old sailor's heart, might be reconciled with architectural beauty and
the wholesome contrivances of modern dwellings, and thus a novel and
genuine style of building be given to the world.
But their countrymen meant kindly by the old fellows in assigning them
the ancient royal site where Elizabeth held her court and Charles II.
began to build his palace. So far as the locality went, it was treating
them like so many kings; and, with a discreet abundance of grog, beer,
and tobacco, there was perhaps little more to be accomplished in behalf
of men whose whole previous lives have tended to unfit them for old age.
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