Those two sturdy old line-of-battle ships, with their lofty sides and long ranges of ports, tier over tier, are of types more seemly, more impressive, than the wallowing masses of ironmongery that to-day are in the forefront of our navy. They recall the days when England was well defended against tremendous odds by her wooden walls, superseded in these days by intricate machinery, inconstant and uncertain in time of need, and misdirected from Westminster by wooden heads that unluckily show no signs of supersession. The moon had risen over Kingswear when our throbbing cockle-shell stopped her heart-beats and was warped gently against the pontoon, and the shine tipped every little ripple in the harbour with silver, making silhouettes of Kingswear houses and hills. Two red lights shone from the landing-stage, and a number of other lights glimmered yellow by comparison with the moon’s rays; other hills were of a velvety blackness, and against them stood out the slim white masts and spars of the many yachts anchored out in mid-stream. The little pencillings of light that played upon the water added to the charm of the scene and the witchery of it. You cannot convey a sense of its beauty by words; it cannot, indeed, be conveyed at all. Take the charmingest effect of stage scenery that you have ever seen, and add a Shylock-like percentage, then you are by way of a conception of the surpassing beauty of Dartmouth harbour on a summer’s night. XLV. Little yellow coaches run three times daily from Dartmouth to Kingsbridge and _vice versâ_, running winter and summer. We walked out of Dartmouth as far as Stoke Fleming--three miles. What shall I say of the country, save that it was hilly? I think we walked to the village through some dim recollections of the name and fame of Thomas Newcomen, who invented the steam-engine, lived and died at Dartmouth, and was buried here. They say his first notion of steam power was gained through watching the steam from his kettle lifting the lid, but do they not also say the same of James Watt? After all we did not find much of interest in Stoke Fleming church, and saw nothing of Thomas Newcomen’s tomb. But, on the other hand, we saw and copied the curious epitaph to his ancestor, Elias Newcomen, who was vicar here. It is a small mural brass, on the south chancel pier:-- “Elias old lies here intombd in grave but Newecomin to heavens habitation In knowledge old, in zeale, in life most grave too good for all who live in lamentation, Whose ffire & Ceed with hauie plaint & mone will say too late Elias old is gone. The xiij of Ivli 1614.”