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.