joyful
blaze, at least with a cheerful and tender gleam from sea and sky.

The Land's End was visible at a great distance; and as we neared the
Lizard, we could see not only the lighthouses on the Cliff, and
every well-known cove and rock from Mullion and Kynance round to St.
Keverne, but far inland likewise. Breage Church, and the great tin-
works of Wheal Vor, stood out hard against the sky. We could see up
the Looe Pool to Helston Church, and away beyond it, till we fancied
that we could almost discern, across the isthmus, the sacred hill of
Carnbrea.

Along the Cornish shore we ran, through a sea swarming with sails:
an exciting contrast to the loneliness of the wide ocean which we
had left--and so on to Plymouth Sound.

The last time I had been on that water, I was looking up in awe at
Sir Edward Codrington's fleet just home from the battle of Navarino.
Even then, as a mere boy, I was struck by the grand symmetry of that
ample basin: the break water--then unfinished--lying across the
centre; the heights of Bovisand and Cawsand, and those again of
Mount Batten and Mount Edgecumbe, left and right; the citadel and
the Hoe across the bottom of the Sound, the southern sun full on
their walls, with the twin harbours and their forests of masts,
winding away into dim distance on each side; and behind all and
above all, the purple range of Dartmoor, with the black rain-clouds
crawling along its top. And now, after nearly forty years, the
place looked to me even more grand than my recollections had
pictured it. The newer fortifications have added to the moral
effect of the scene, without taking away from its physical beauty:
and I heard without surprise--though not without pride--the
foreigners express their admiration of this, their first specimen of
an English port.

We steamed away again, after landing our letters, close past the
dear old Mewstone. The warrener's hut stood on it still: and I
wondered whether the old he-goat, who used to terrify me as a boy,
had left any long-bearded descendants. Then under the Revelstoke
and Bolt Head cliffs, with just one flying glance up into the hidden
nooks of delicious little Salcombe, and away south-west into the
night, bound for Cherbourg, and a very different scene.

We were awakened soon after midnight by the stopping of the steamer.
Then a gun. After awhile another; and presently a third: but there
was no reply, though our c