We slipped on homeward. The cliff-wall of Lundy stood out blacker and blacker every moment against the gay western sky; greens, greys, and purples, dyeing together into one deep rich monotone, for which our narrow colour-vocabulary has no word; and threw a long cold shadow towards us across the golden sea; suddenly above its dark ridge a wild wreath of low rack caught the rays of the setting sun, and flamed up like a volcano towards the dun and purple canopy of upper clouds. Before us the blue sea and the blue land-line were fading into mournful grey, on which one huge West Indiaman blazed out, orange and scarlet, her crowded canvas all a-flame from the truck to the water’s edge.—A few moments and she, too, had vanished into the grey twilight, and a chill night-wind crisped the sea. It was a relief to hear the Evening Hymn rise rich and full from one voice, and then another and another, till the men chimed in one by one, and the whole cutter, from stem to stern, breathed up its melody into the silent night. But the hymn soon flagged—there was more mirth on board than could vent itself in old Charles Wesley’s words; and one began to hum a song tune, and then another, with a side glance at the expression of the Lady Abbess’s face, till at last, when a fair wife took courage, and burst out with full pipe into ‘The sea, the sea,’ the ice was fairly broken; and among jests and laughter one merry harmless song after another rang out, many of them, to Claude’s surprise, fashionable London ones, which sounded strangely enough out there on the wild western sea. At last—‘Claude, friend,’ I whispered, ‘you must sing your share too—and mine also, for that matter.’ ‘What shall I sing?’ ‘Anything you will, from the sublime to the ridiculous. They will understand and appreciate it as well as yourself. Recollect, you are not among bullet-headed South Saxon clods, but among wits as keen and imaginations as rich as those of any Scotch shepherd or Manchester operative.’ And up rose his exquisite tenor. This was his first song, but it was not allowed to be his last. German ballads, Italian Opera airs, were all just as warmly, and perhaps far more sincerely appreciated, as they would have been by any London evening-party; and the singing went on, hour after hour, as we slipped slowly on upon the tide, till it grew late, and the sweet voices died away one by one; and then the Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity which had reigned so pleasantly throughout the day took a new form, as the women huddled together to sleep in each other’s arms; and the men and we clustered forwards, while from every mouth fragrant incense steamed upwards into the air. ‘Man a cooking animal?’ my dear Doctor Johnson—pooh! man is a smoking animal. There is his ergon, his ‘differential energy,’ as the Aristotelians say—his true distinction from the ourang-outang. Ponder it well.