ve scrambled through the
usual labyrinth of timber-baulks, rusty anchors, boats which have been
dragged, for the purpose of mending and tarring, into the very middle
of the road, and old spars stowed under walls, in the vain hope that
they may be of some use for something some day, and have stood the
stares and welcomes of the lazy giants who are sitting about upon
them, black-locked, black-bearded, with ruddy, wholesome faces, and
eyes as bright as diamonds; men who are on their own ground, and know
it; who will not touch their caps to you, or pull the short black pipe
from between their lips as you pass, but expect you to prove yourself
a gentleman, by speaking respectfully to them; which, if you do, you
will find them as hearty, intelligent, brave fellows as ever walked
this earth, capable of anything, from working the naval-brigade
guns at Sevastopol, down to running up to ... a hundred miles in a
cockleshell lugger, to forestall the early mackerel market. God be
with you, my brave lads, and with your children after you; for as long
as you are what I have known you, Old England will rule the seas, and
many a land beside!

But in going up Aberalva Street, you remark several things; first,
that the houses were all white-washed yesterday, except where the
snowy white is picked out by buttresses of pink and blue; next,
that they all have bright green palings in front, and bright green
window-sills and frames; next, that they are all roofed with shining
grey slate, and the space between the window and the pales flagged
with the same; next, that where such space is not flagged, it is full
of flowers and shrubs which stand the winter only in our greenhouses.
The fuchsias are ten feet high, laden with ripe purple berries running
over (for there are no birds to pick them off); and there in the front
of the coast-guard lieutenant's house, is Cobaea scandens, covered
with purple claret-glasses, as it has been ever since Christmas: for
Aberalva knows no winter: and there are grown-up men in it who never
put on a skate, or made a snowball in their lives. A most cleanly,
bright-coloured, foreign-looking street, is that long straggling one
which runs up the hill towards Penalva Court: only remark, that this
cleanliness is gained by making the gutter in the middle street the
common sewer of the town, and tread clear of cabbage-leaves, pilchard
bones, _et id genus omne_. For Aberalva is like Paris (if the answer
of a celebrated san