No one has ever sailed down or up the Thames, and surveyed the. stately domes and colonnades of Greenwich Hospital, without admiring the background which the wooded heights of Greenwich Park give to the landscape, and the contrasting architecture of the brick towers and minarets of the Royal Observatory, placed on a commanding height in the prolongation of the middle area of the Hospital, and thus terminating the vista. But few of these voyagers, we suspect, take time to consider that the British Navy owes an important part of its efficiency not less to the Observatory than to the Hospital,-that Humanity is interested in the former as well as in the latter,-that the sovereign who foresaw the ultimate consequence to certain and safe Navigation of a good system of Astronomical observations, was in this instance as wise and patriotic as he who provided a magnificent asylum for the helpless old age of those who had already often owed the preservation of life to the patient vigils of the astronomer.

The fortunes of Greenwich Park have been as varied as those of most places the property of the crown in the vicinity of a capital. The manor of East Greenwich was

*Deptford was West Greenwich. VOL. XX. NO. IV.

an unenclosed waste until the reign of Henry VI., when a charter conveying 200 acres of it was given to Humphry, Duke of Gloster, the king's uncle, and to Eleanor his wife.

This curious charter (of which a copy is now before us) is dated 26th of March, 1437.* Perhaps the foundations of Duke Humphrey's tower still exist; at all events, it is certain that the Observatory is built on the same site, being a position of no inconsiderable strength. It is a kind of peninsula jutting out toward the Thames from the general level of Blackheath and the southern district of the Park, with which it is connected by a tolerably narrow isthmus, whilst the

*Rot. Patent, 15 Hen. 6., M. 7. As a specimen of the quaint latinity, we quote the following permission:-" Muris petra et calce includere et turrellare, ac quandam Turrim infra Parcum præfirmare, et muros illos kernellare, battellare, et dictum similiter petra et calce de novo construere, edificare, et tam turrim illam sic de novo-constructam et edificatam quam dictum manerium sive mansionem ut præmittitur inclusum, firmatum, kerpossint sibi et hæredibus suis prædictis in pernellatum, imbattelatum, et turrellatum, tenere petuum," &c. Copied from the original in the Tower.

1 Kernellare, from creneaux, (Fr.) to make battlements for defence.

2 Hence it appears that there must have been some still older structure.

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