“Who never said a foolish thing
And never did a wise one,”
was, at one period, unbounded. It was in this instance, at least, exerted in the cause of mercy and virtue, as well as gratitude; the College remains a lasting contradiction to the memorable epigram I have quoted; inasmuch as a “wiser thing” than its foundation, to say nothing of its justice, is not recorded in the chronicles of the reign of any British sovereign. Many a victory has been won for these kingdoms by the knowledge that the maimed soldier will not be a deserted beggar—by the certainty that honourable “scars” will be healed by other ointment than that of mere pity! Chelsea and Greenwich are enduring monuments to prove that a Nation knows how to be grateful. The brave men who pace along these corridors may “talk o’er their wounds,” and while shouldering their crutches, to “show how fields were won,” point to the recompense as a stimulus to younger candidates for glory. Who can sufficiently estimate the value of this reward? Let us ask what it has done for our country; but let us ask it on the battle fields, where French eagles were taken: eagles, a score of which are now the trophies of our triumphs, in the very halls which the veterans, who won them, tread up and down.
The pensioners—though, as human beings, each may have a distinctive character—are, to a certain degree, alike; clean and orderly, erect in their carriage for a much longer period than civilians of equal ages, and disputing all the encroachments of time, inch by inch—fighting with as much determination for life as formerly they did for glory. When they die, they die of old age.
The month I have said was April—the April of 1838: old James Hardy and John Coyne were walking beneath the colonnade that faces the water-garden. They were both old, yet John considered James a mere boy. John’s face had been “broken up” by a gun-shot wound at Seringapatam, which anticipated time; and James “stumped” very vigorously along on a brace of wooden legs, his eyes bright and twinkling, his laugh ringing out, at the conclusion of each of his brief, pithy stories, which he told as earnestly as if John could hear them; John, however, had heard them all before he became deaf, and as James only re-drew upon his ancient store, John had no great loss. He looked up in his comrade’s face, caught the cheerful infection of his comrade’s laugh, by sight though not by sound, and laughed also—not as James laughed, but in a little quiet way, something like the rattle of a baby’s drum—and then James would wind it up by saying—“There! did you ever hear the like of that before!” and bestow a sounding slap on his friend’s shoulder. They were comrades in every sense of the word, for they inhabited the same dormitory, nest by nest; John cherishing a canary, whose song he had never heard, though he used to declare it sang like a nightingale, with a woodlark’s note—while James had ranged all manner of curious crockery on the shelf over his bed, filling up the intermediate spaces with caricatures of the French, the iron head of a halbert, the buckle of a French cuirass, a fragment of an ensign’s gorget, and a few other reliques of a “foughten field,”—
“The treasures of a soldier, bought with blood,
And kept at life’s expense.”
As they strutted lovingly together, delighting, as children do, in sunshine, while James talked and laughed incessantly, a tall, thin, military-looking man, as hard and erect as a ramrod, marched up to them, with as measured a tread as if he were in the ranks; then, wheeling about, presented James with a leaf of laurel, one of many he held in his hand; there was a wild sparkle in his eyes, and a bright flush upon his cheek.
“What for, serjeant-major?” inquired James, taking the leaf, and giving a military salute.
“Toulouse!” answered the veteran, in a voice of triumph; yet the tone was full of music, and rendered ample justice to the musical word. “Toulouse! my old fellow,” he repeated.
“So it is!” answered James Hardy; “it is the anniversary, sure enough. And yet, master, if we are to mount a fresh laurel for every day we gained a victory, we shall have to get as many as there are days in the year.”