._--After spending a day here under special advantages, I have
succeeded in seeing whatever was worth seeing for my purpose, and in
getting a fine sketch of a Woolwich Pensioner by Sully,--Robert M.
Sully, nephew of Thomas Sully, and a capital draughtsman,--to serve as a
companion piece for the Greenwich Pensioner by the same artist. The man
had served against us in the Revolutionary War, and participated in the
"affair" of Bunker Hill. The shovel hats, the long chins and retreating
mouths of these aged men at Greenwich, are wonderfully hit off by
Cruikshank, with a mere flourish of the pen. I have a scene in a
watch-house, with half a score of heads, thoroughly Irish, drunk or
sleepy, and as many more of these shovel hats, which the clever artist
amused himself with scratching off,--as we sat talking together at a
table,--on a little bit of waste paper, which fluttered away in the
draft from a window, and fell upon the floor.

Saw a prodigious quantity of guns to be "let loose" in the dock-yard, to
which I was admitted as a great privilege. When Alexander of Russia and
the king of Prussia were admitted after the war, they were greatly
disappointed and mortified, I was told, at seeing such a vast
accumulation of warlike material. They supposed England to be exhausted.

The English artillery is far superior in details to the French, though
not half so abundant. Where the French bring eighty pieces at once into
the field, the English never have more than twenty pieces. The English
lost only two guns in the whole Peninsular war; the French lost nearly
eleven hundred, Waterloo included.

At Woolwich there are two or three hundred acres full of machinery, with
saw-mills, planing-mills, &c. Saw, among other inventions and
improvements, anchor shanks made largest about one third of the distance
from the crown, where they always bend or break; an original
screw-cutter of uncommon merit; and a perpetual capstan for drawing in
wood for the mill.

* * * * *

_Illuminations._--His Majesty's birthday. By one odd arrangement of
colored lamps, which was intended for George IV., it reads thus,
_Giver_, being G. IV. R. The populace break windows which are not
lighted up. The king's tradesmen are most astonishing in their
manifestations of loyalty; and, among others, I see an establishment
with this inscription: "Bug Destroyer to his Majesty."

* * * * *

_Chimney-Swee