oming had been telegraphed from England;
and for nearly six hours we lay in the heart of the most important
French arsenal, with all our mails and passengers waiting to get
ashore; and nobody deigning to notice us. True, we could do no harm
there: but our delay, and other things which happened, were proofs-
-and I was told not uncommon ones--of that carelessness,
unreadiness, and general indiscipline of French arrangements, which
has helped to bring about, since then, an utter ruin.

As the day dawned through fog, we went on deck to find the ship
lying inside a long breakwater bristling with cannon, which looked
formidable enough: but the whole thing, I was told, was useless
against modern artillery and ironclads: and there was more than one
jest on board as to the possibility of running the Channel Squadron
across, and smashing Cherbourg in a single night, unless the French
learnt to keep a better look-out in time of war than they did in
time of peace.

Just inside us lay two or three ironclads; strong and ugly: untidy,
too, to a degree shocking to English eyes. All sorts of odds and
ends were hanging over the side, and about the rigging; the yards
were not properly squared, and so forth; till--as old sailors would
say--the ships had no more decency about them than so many collier-
brigs.

Beyond them were arsenals, docks, fortifications, of which of course
we could not judge; and backing all, a cliff, some two hundred feet
high, much quarried for building-stone. An ugly place it is to look
at; and, I should think, an ugly place to get into, with the wind
anywhere between N.W. and N.E.; an artificial and expensive luxury,
built originally as a mere menace to England, in days when France,
which has had too long a moral mission to right some one, thought of
fighting us, who only wished to live in peace with our neighbours.
Alas! alas! 'Tu l'a voulu, George Dandin.' She has fought at last:
but not us.

Out of Cherbourg we steamed again, sulky enough; for the delay would
cause us to get home on the Sunday evening instead of the Sunday
morning; and ran northward for the Needles. With what joy we saw at
last the white wall of the island glooming dim ahead. With what joy
we first discerned that huge outline of a visage on Freshwater
Cliff, so well known to sailors, which, as the eye catches it in one
direction, is a ridiculous caricature; in another, really noble, and
even b