stitious observances. Prayers innumerable were to be offered up; Rome was ransacked for relics; he sent to Reims for the sacred oil; he would again be anointed. He tortured his physicians by his threats, and they in return tortured him by their remedies. It was at this epoch that the famous answer was made by the physician who had long attended him. "I know," said Jacques Cottier, "that some fine morning you will send me where you have sent so many others; but, par la mort Dieu! you will not live eight days after it." This seems to have been said, not from any astrological point of view, but simply because he, Jacques Cottier, was the only man who understood the malady of the King. We have intimations that Louis in his youth, and again in his old age, gave some attention to astrology, but we nowhere read that astrology gained any noticeable influence over him. His superstitions were those of the Church.

This superstition of Louis XI. stands forth in strange relief upon his character. It perplexes us, with our modern views of religion. The first theory is, that it was hypocrisy. But when we see it grow stronger with advancing years, and strongest of all at the very ebb of life, we are driven from this theory. No; it was sincere religion, but of a very miserable order. Louis XI., who was so very able a statesman, was on a par with the lowest of the people, or the lowest of the clergy, in his religion. There is nothing new in this; yet frequent as the examples are, we are constantly surprised when a man, great in statesmanship or science, is still a child in theology. Both Louis XI. and Charles the Bold were pious men after a certain pattern. Charles, whose dreadful revenges remind

us of some terrible passages in Roman history, and would indeed disgrace a pagan tyrant, esteemed himself a very good Christian, and would assuredly have committed to the flames with pious horror any number of heretics. Louis XI., while he was sending to Rome, and even to Constantinople, for relics, and founding convents, and fitting up two hermitages in the grounds of Plessis, that he might have prayers constantly offered up, so to speak, on the very spot where assistance was needed, did not employ Tristan l'Hermite the less. There was in both of these men a complete divorce between religion and morality. What they understood by religion, was some supernatural assistance to be got at by prayers and ceremonies for their own health, pleasure, or their ambitious designs, whatever they might be.

A reader of this history of Charles the Bold will rise from it with a feeling of gratitude that he lives in an age when more humane and more rational sentiments are prevalent than such as generally animated kings and politicians of the middle ages. The severest satirist of our own times will obtain a momentary gratification from the conviction that, bad as we may be, the Europe of three centuries ago was infinitely worse. And in no respect have we more conspicuously advanced than in the indissoluble alliance now formed in almost all minds between morality and religion. Not only a few eminent thinkers, but the general mass of the community, conceive of religion, not as a miraculous assistance for the gratification of all the wants and desires of a human being, but as being essentially a state of the affections towards man and God, and therefore in its very nature inseparable from morality.

In this age of rapid progress and sweeping change in the mechanical arts and in all branches of science, not the least remarkable is the extraordinary transformation which all matters relating to maritime affairs have undergone; whether we look to the Royal Navy or to the Mercantile Marine, whether to the form and mode of construction or to the method of propulsion, to the weapons of attack or to the means of defence. Half a century only has elapsed since steam navigation became an established possibility, while the introduction of this revolutionary principle into the navy dates some eight or ten years later; and yet in this comparatively short space of time what wonderful advance has been made, and what extraordinary changes have occurred! When the very first sea-voyage was made by any steamer-a small vessel creeping cautiously round the coast from the Clyde to the Thames-Lord Palmerston was Secretary at War, and had been some years in Parliament; and now, when our ironclad leviathans are fast approaching to a fleet in numbers, while in point of efficiency for war purposes they are far more powerful than the largest fleet the world ever saw, the

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same eminent statesman is at the head of the Government, and leads the House of Commons.

But in truth it is within the last twenty-three years that this progress has been chiefly made-that is to say, since the introduction of the system of screw propulsion. So long as paddle-steamers only were in existence, the exposure of their wheels and machinery to the effect of the enemy's shot rendered these vessels useful only as auxiliaries, the real fighting strength of the fleet remaining with the line-ofbattle ships and frigates of olden days; while the great expense which attended paddle-steamers, owing to the necessity of constant steaming in consequence of their sluggishness under sail, rendered their employment for commercial purposes impracticable, except for coasting trade, and when heavily subsidised as mail-packets. Now all is changed, however; lines of powerful screw-steamers daily leave our ports with passengers and merchandise for all parts of the world, and, except for harbour service, not a sailing-vessel remains on the list of the British navy.

We may, however, narrow still more the period of strongly-marked

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transition with regard to vessels of war. The introduction of iron-clad ships, and the tremendous ordnance which is now being manufactured, have indeed brought about a revolution in naval warfare which, so lately as ten years since, was not dreamt of, and which has caused the greatest interest and anxiety throughout the whole civilised world, giving birth to a fecundity of invention on all points bearing on these subjects perfectly unexampled. And what has tended most strongly to excite and keep up public interest with regard to this question of naval attack and defence, was the extreme uncertainty as to which side the superiority would remain with-the armour or the cannon; the conclusions arrived at by the result of the experiments and trials of to-day being utterly overthrown by the further experience of the morrow; and so on, day after day, week after week. This period of uncertainty seems, however, at length to have passed away, and the victory remains with the guns, as indeed all reflecting persons must have anticipated; for while the difficulties in the way of increasing the size and power of ordnance were of a mere mechanical nature, which the skill of our manufacturers would undoubtedly overcome in the course of time, it was very evident that the limits of weight of defensive armour for sea-going ships had almost, if not quite, already been reached. And even were this not so, and it were found possible to send ships to sea clothed in iron plates of double the present thickness, recent experiments have fully demonstrated the possibility of constructing guns and projectiles to pierce them.

The subject is therefore now divested of much of its previous uncertainty, and the question of attack and defence brought back much more nearly to its former position than could but a few months ago have been generally anticipated. It is no longer a question of invulnerable ships, but of what description

of gun and projectile is best calculated to destroy an iron-clad, and what is the best description of vessel to carry these necessarily heavy weapons. It was but yesterday that the best 4-inch armourplates, such as were used for our Warriors and Valiants, absolutely defied penetration except by solid shot at very short distances, and then only after repeated blows about the same place; whereas we have lately seen a single steel shell from the huge 600-pounder go clean through the Warrior target at one thousand yards' distance, not only smashing the armour-plate, but inflicting such terrible injury on the timber backing, and what represented the sides and beams of the ship, that such a shot striking at the water-line would infallibly sink in a few minutes any armourcased vessel which was unprovided with water-tight compartments. As to resisting these huge projectiles by increasing the thickness of the plates, or by improving the quality of the iron or steel of which they are made; when we consider the momentum with which one of these 600-pound shot, fired with a charge of seventy pounds of powder, must strike the side of the vessel-the shot being made of hardened steel, so as not to break on impact-there can be no doubt that, even were the armour-plating not penetrated, the concussion would be so tremendous, that no combination of wood and iron in the shape of a sea-going ship could withstand it.

If, then, these monster cannon should come into general use, as seems in time highly probable, so far from armour-plating giving immunity to ships of war from the effect of shot and shell, they will be in even worse plight than formerly; seeing that, on the one hand, the armour will not keep out hardened steel projectiles, while, on the other, by its enormous weight, the vessel is rendered less manageable and buoyant, and its chances of sinking from the effects of shot are increased tenfold. The

case is, in fact, not unlike that of the body-armour of the knights of old at the time of the invention of gunpowder. If this agent of destruction had remained undiscovered, we should probably have seen at this day our troops of the line, clothed in steel, belabouring their enemies with heavy two-handed swords; while the cavalry, clad in corslet and casque, with lance in rest, rushed on their foe as in olden days but when it was seen that the cumbersome steel armour afforded no protection to the wearer against the newly-invented weapons, it was discarded and laid aside for ever.

Are we, then, to go on building iron-cased ships when they can be riddled through and through by shell as well as by shot? The question cannot be answered without hesitation. In the first place, this heavy artillery is as yet only on trial; for although there has been no very great difficulty experienced in constructing immense guns to carry heavy shot with low charges, yet, when it comes to the proportion of powder required to give a velocity sufficient to penetrate iron plates of five or six inches in thickness, the enormous strain which the piece has to withstand by the explosion of sixty or seventy pounds of powder has tasked the skill and ingenuity of our manufacturers to the utmost; and as yet no very large gun has stood the test of repeated firing with heavy charges. In the next place, it still remains to be proved that these large guns can be mounted and worked on board sea-going ships.

Assuming, however, that both these conditions can be fulfilled that the guns can be made, and that ships can carry them-let us see how the question will then stand. It is an extremely important consideration, for our navy is undergoing a rapid transformation; enormous sums are being annually spent upon the construction of costly vessels, which, after all, may turn out in a very few years to be quite as

useless for the purposes of warfare, as are our fine three-deckers at the present day. And yet, if we wish to keep pace with other nations, and to maintain our position as the first maritime power, we must go on building these vessels; for whatever may be their value as fighting ships hereafter, there can be no doubt of their terrible power in that respect as matters stand at present.

That the size and power of landordnance will be soon very greatly increased is certain; for if the 600pounders should prove too large and heavy for sea-service, there is no reason whatever why they may not be mounted in forts and batteries on the coast, while the defensive power of these may be strengthened indefinitely by plates or slabs of iron of almost any thickness. The chances, therefore, of ships against forts, decrease day by day, notwithstanding the armour-plating; which must be specially encouraging to those alarmists who have perpetually before their eyes the invasion of England and the destruction of the dockyards. And indeed this has a most important bearing upon the subject of home defence; it divests of much of its formidable aspect the possibility of a squadron of iron-clads threatening our coasts and harbours, and it will oppose a salutary check upon the aggressive policy of any strong maritime power.

If we consider the consequences of the introduction into naval use of artillery having sufficient power to penetrate armour-plating with as much ease as the 24-pounders of days gone by pierced the sides of the old line-of-battle ships, the question resolves itself into thisthat an action between two ironclad ships of equal strength, carrying such guns, will be a combat à l'outrance, the probability being that one if not both of the combatants would be sunk; and if this did not happen during the action, most certainly even the conqueror would be so damaged as to be completely at the mercy of any mode

rate gale of wind that might overtake her before reaching port. For be it remembered, that stopping shot-holes and otherwise repairing damage after an action at sea in an iron-clad, as used to be done in former times in the old wooden ships, would be next to impossible. Were a general action to take place between two fleets of iron-cased ships, the results would be similar. Many vessels would be sunk, and the loss of life would be very great; while the victorious fleet would probably be rendered unfit for further service for months to come, and the cost of such a battle to each country could only be reckoned by millions sterling.

In all this, however, England has lost no advantage; her unrivalled resources and immense wealth would enable her to replace such a fleet in an incomparably shorter space of time than could be done by any other nation; and though the loss of life in any individual action would be in all probability much greater than in former days, yet there would be fewer battles fought, and the struggle could not be prolonged beyond a year or two, by reason of the enormous cost of the present system of warfare.

Seeing then that, for the present at all events, our naval strength consists in iron - clads, the first question that arises, in considering the nature of our new fleet, is, whether wood or iron is the better material wherewith to construct the ships. It is of course perfectly well known that opinions have been, and still are, greatly divided upon this point, the importance of which is only surpassed by the difficulty of solution, so much is to be said for and against both sides. And, in fact, this question, like many others relating to iron-cased ships, has assumed a different aspect from time to time in consequence of the varying results of the trial of guns versus plates. The Controller of the Navy, Rear-Admiral Robinson, has entered fully into this discussion in a paper laid before Parliament last session,

in which he sets forth the relative merits of each, and pronounces, on the whole, in favour of wood; but a distinguished French officer, RearAdmiral Paris, has gone into the same question very minutely in a most valuable and instructive work written by him, entitled 'L'Art Naval à l'Exposition Universelle de Londres de 1862,' and he arrives at the opposite conclusion, giving his opinion strongly in favour of iron.

It may be well here to enumerate briefly the principal points on both sides of this controversy as it stands at present.

The arguments, then, in favour of iron are these: An iron ship may be built of any size without loss of strength, as witness the Great Eastern; it is stronger, as a whole, than a wooden ship, and is also of less weight; it may be built in the shortest possible time without detriment; it will cost less to keep in repair; it will last considerably longer than a wooden ship, and, if hauled up out of water, or kept in a dry dock or basin, may be maintained in a state of perfect preservation for almost any period; it is not so easily sunk by submarine shot, by collision, or by striking a rock, in consequence of the arrangement of water-tight compartments; it presents much less inflammable material to the action of shells and other combustible missiles.

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The disadvantages of the iron ship are: Its much greater first cost, when built on the cellular principle with a double bottom, as must be the case in vessels of war; it is much weaker, locally, than a wooden ship, and is thus more easily penetrated by submarine shot or by submerged ram," and is more liable to damage by rocks; the impossibility of stopping shotholes, or executing any other immediate repair to the hull; the difficulty of ventilation, from the stagnation of air in the confined spaces between the water-tight bulkheads, renders the iron ship less healthy, and more subject to infec