NESS.

(Times, Sept. 17.)

out the giant's nerves of steel." Towards NAVAL EXPERIMENTS AT SHOEBURYthe conclusion of his sketch of Abraham Lincoln's labour and self-sacrifice the writer observes "Mr. Lincoln's moderate fortune did not permit him to offer to many the hospitalities of the White House. He had refused to receive his salary except in paper money, though Congress would willingly have authorized its being paid in gold. He impoverished rather than enriched himself in the four years during which he had held the reins of government, while the budget of the United States reached, at a bound, a sum to be compared only with that of the oldest and the wealthiest European States. He did not take a single instant from State affairs. He entered but a single time the beautiful conservatory of the Presidential mansion during that whole four years. His only relaxation was when Mrs. Lincoln on rare occasions took him, almost in spite of himself, to the theatre. He was passionately fond of Shakspeare. It matters little to me,' he one day said to me, 'whether Shakspeare be ill or well played. The thoughts are enough."" Recalling a visit which he paid, together with Mr. Lincoln, to Ford's Theatre, the writer contin

ues

"I had one day, in the month of January, the honour of being invited to accompany him to the representation of 'King Lear.' 'I went with him to that same Ford's Theatre, and to the same box where he was afterwards so cowardly assassinated. The Washington theatre is small and out of repair. You reached the Presidential box by a passage left open behind the spectators in the galleries, and to gain entrance, there was only a door to be opened and a curtain to be raised. The back of the box was hung with a piece of red velvet, but they had not even taken pains to cover, either with velvet or cloth on the inside, the pine boards that formed the front. It will be easily imagined that I was more occupied by the President than by the piece. He listened attentively, although he knew the play by heart. He followed with attention all the incidents, and talked with Mr. Sumner and myself only between the acts. His second son, a boy eleven years old, was close to him. Mr. Lincoln held him almost all the time in his arms, often pressing the child's smiling or astonished head to his broad breast, and replying to his numerous questions with the greatest patience. Certain allusions made by King Lear to parental grief brought a cloud over the President's forebead. He had lost a young child at the White House, and was inconsolable for its

death."

Even the opponents of M. Laugel's political theories will thank him for these recollections of Honest Abe.

THAT the strongest ironclad afloat might be sent to the bottom as easily as a wooden frigate is now a fact about which it is hardly possible to entertain a doubt. A target with greater resisting powers than the broadside of any iron-cased frigate or the turret of any monitor has been completely smashed by a particular kind of shot fired from a particular kind of gun, and that gun and that shot are of British make and invention. It is of equal importance to observe that the gun which has proved so irresistible is not a piece of any prodigious calibre or impracticable weight, but only such a gun as could be carried and worked in a ship's broadside. Whereas, too, it is scarcely credible that any ship could be sent to sea with thicker or more ponderous armour than was represented in the target demolished, it is very credible indeed that the calibre, charge, and power of the gun might be increased, so that the essential question between ships and guns may be regarded as settled. That is the conclusion forced upon us by the results of the remarkable experiments just reported from Shoeburyness.

The target exposed to fire on this occasion was built up of 18 inches of teak, and this compact mass of woodwork was covered in front with solid plates of rolled iron eight inches thick, and strengthened at the back by an inner skin of iron three-quarters of an inch thick. Altogether, therefore, this imaginary ship's broadside was about two feet three inches in thickness

that is, about as thick as the wall of an old Norman castle, while the materials were hard teak and solid iron, instead of ashlar and rubble. If castles, in fact, had been built in such a fashion, they would have remained up to our own day as impregnable to artillery as they originally were to bows and arrows. Nevertheless, when a gun described as the " 9-inch muzzle-loading wrought-iron Woolwich rifle gun was trained against this target, and fired with a charge of 43 lb of powder and a 250-lb shell of Major Palliser's chilled metal, the effect was decisive. The projectile, we are told, "went clean through everything, plate, backing, and inner skin, and lodged itself, after exploding in some timber, about 20 feet behind the target. Anything more crushing," it is added, " than the shock of this missile it would be difficult

to conceive, for it struck full upon one of advantages of model, the device may still the vertical parts of the target, and tore be a serviceable one, but as regards the its way through as if only opposed by a peculiar capacity of the turrets for carrytimber screen.' A repetition of the experi- ing enormous guns, the recommendation ment did but confirm the results, and the will of course disappear when enormous main fact, therefore, is placed beyond guns are no longer required. As far as we reach of doubt. can now see, the biggest guns wanted for sea service can be carried easily in broadside, and consequently a broadside vessel is just as good as ever. But the facts here ascertained have a still wider application. We remarked the other day, before these experiments had been made, that the whole question appeared to be one rather of guns than ships, and this view of the case is now decisively confirmed. When we

One or two reservations should, it is true, be put upon record. These effects were produced under conditions exceptionally favourable to the gun, which was fired at a comparatively short range, and against an immovable target struck at right angles. It is obvious that such conditions could not always be anticipated in an action between ships carefully manoeuvred, though an English captain would probably ask for nothing more than equality of speed to give him all necessary opportunity for the practice of his guns. Still it must be noticed that when the target was inclined at an angle to the line of fire the projectiles did fail to penetrate it. They tore tremendous holes in the plating, and one of them actually got in to a depth of 12 inches, but they never went quite through. We should also observe that Mr. Chalmers, the inventor of a very celebrated target, claims to be able still to construct a block of wood and iron which shall be impregnable to shot, but practically the case stands as we describe it. Now, as no iron-clad afloat carries solid armour of eight inches in thickness; and as the composite or laminated armour of the American turrets, formed of single-inch plates screwed one upon another, will bear no comparison with solid metal, it follows, as we have said, that the armour of any fighting ship at present known might be completely demolished by a 250-pounder gun. The deductions naturally flowing from this conclusion are important in the

extreme.

In the first place, if we are to accept these facts as permanently established, we may dismiss the question of monster can non from our minds. A gun which will sink an enemy is quite big enough, and nothing would be gained by a bigger one. The hole made in the Shoebury target by a 9-inch Palliser shell was large enough to settle the fate of any vessel afloat. If the Americans prefer 15-inch or 20-inch shot, they have a right to their choice, but it is obvious that this weight of metal and calibre of ordnance represent so much superfluity, if the required work can be performed by a 9-inch gun with equal effect. And this again relieves us of another difficulty. We shall be no longer under the necessity of building turret ships. In so far as a turret vessel represents any other

read that the sides of the Warrior are simply as vulnerable as so much basketwork it seems impossible to regard the Warrior as more of a man-of-war than a stout old frigate. This, of course, would be an extreme conclusion. The Warrior's armour would protect her up to a certain point, and insure her a proportionate superiority, nor is it a slight advantage for a ship to be invulnerable except under peculiar conditions of attack. Still the broad fact remains that an ironclad is as helpless as any wooden corvette against a certain gun which every British ship ought to carry; and we are mistaken if a short advance from this point of departure will. not conduct us to some very satisfactory conclusions.

(Standard, Sept. 17.)

ENGLAND now possesses a missile before which the navies of the world are defenceless. What use are we going to make of it? We may still consider it prudent to carry some amount of armour on our ships' sides; but it would evidently be unwise to overload our vessels in the vain hope of being invulnerable. The Palliser process may still be to some extent a secret; but can we rely upon its continuing so? Or if the minutiae of the invention be still shrouded from the eyes of Europe and America, may we not expect that the ingenuity of continental engineers will discover processes equivalent to our own? In substance the invention is known to all; the details may be expected to follow. Nor are the results now spoken of producible only by ordnance of an extravagant size. The 9-inch shell is fired by a gun of about 12 tons weight, and although this is perhaps as heavy a piece as can be worked without a turn-table, yet the turret ship can far exceed such ordnance. Upon the whole, we must, therefore, decide that our ships

like those of the enemy-will be vulnerable. It will, therefore, be our wisdom to establish a reasonable proportion between the weight of our sea-borne armour and the other elements of a war ship. Having weighted the sides of our ship with so many tons of armour, we may properly decline to proceed further in that direction, and may endeavour to carry the most formidable array of guns at the highest speed. Or perhaps we may reverse the problem - aim at the highest speed, the most effective ordnance, and then give what weight remains to the armour. The day may come, indeed, when speed and force will be considered everything, and penetrable armour be moulded anew in the shape of guns and shells. But when that day arrives we may confidently expect to see iron substituted for wood in the building of our ships. It would seem that the difficulty of preserving iron ships is at length overcome, and in that fact alone we observe an enormous gain in the direction of iron ship building.

intrinsic probability of such a demand, there is still less support to be found for the rumour. Mr. SEWARD did indeed say, in the course of the recent wild Presidential stumping, that his countrymen were anxious to fight with Spain and Great Britain, and in such a case, of course, a foothold in Europe would be very convenient. Only there is no great reason to suppose that the Secretary was right in attributing this charitable anxiety for a fight to the American people. Their good sense at critical moments, their humanity, their usual moderation in act if not in speech, and their devotion to commercial prosperity, all tend to discredit the alleged existence of so flagitious a desire except in the breasts of a few hundred rowdies, and perhaps a philanthropist or two. It would be absurd to try to conceal from ourselves that an English reverse would cause no grief in the United States. But there is all the difference in the world between inflicting an injury and beholding it inflicted without compunction. And nothing seems more improbable than that, merely for the sake of gratifying a temporary pique against this country, the Americans would entangle themselves in all the complications of European politics. A nation does not for so comparatively slight a cause allow the deepest and oldest of its traditions to be set aside. Isolation from the international transactions of Europe, IT appears that the rumoured demand by provided Europe will leave America to the the Americans of an island in the Mediter- Americans, is so fundamental an article of ranean has been received not without a cer- their creed, that a deliberate departure from tain cynical satisfaction by more than one it such as would be implied in taking posContinental nation. In Austria, for exam-session of an island in the Mediterranean ple, disgusted and astonished as she was at our attitude of seven years ago, and full of spleen at our absolute standing aloof during the struggle that is just over, people are found who do not dissemble their hopes that the presence of an American fleet in European waters would be the means of seriously embroiling Great Britain. But the wish, we suspect, is here the father to the thought. The authority for the statement that the United States have preferred this request to the Porte has never been clearly made known. It has never been traced beyond Mr. REUTER, the unflinching omniscience of whose very wonderful agents has done some harm to their credit for accuracy. It comes also from those mysterious regions of Eastern Europe which are famous as being the chief seed-ground of political lies of all sorts. Russian newspapers seem to be the great manufactories of the raw material which the telegraph thus supplies. And if we turn from the external evidence to the

From the Saturday Review, 13 Oct. AMERICA AS A EUROPEAN POWER.

would mark nothing less than a downright revolution, and a revolution, moreover, for which there would have been no adequate preliminary conditions.

For the Americans themselves it is clear that their interference in strictly European affairs would be as disastrous as it would be inconsistent with their systematic traditions. It would simply divert them from the great and absorbing task of perfecting their own civilization on their own principles, while they could play no satisfactory part in a State-system grounded on a past, and moving in currents, to which the comparatively brief history of their Republic offers nothing analogous. A great State has its own orbit, marked out for it by the direction and bearings of the former part of its course. No truly American politician could discern with practical accuracy the lines on which the various old European States, with their long annals, are accustomed to move, and from which they could not be abruptly di

verted without the ruin of all those social | ing on any question which, like the disposal forces which underlie their very existence. of the crumbling empire of Turkey, is emWith Russia alone, of European States, the phatically less of a Transatlantic question statesmen of the Republic seem able to than any other that we can think of. But, maintain something like sympathy, and for it may be said, the Americans would need no the reason that the history of Russia as a other principle than the simple rule that civilized Power is barely as long as their they should take who can. This, however, own. Though there is a wide difference be- implies a forgetfulness of the fact that peo tween the stage which America has reached ple are not likely to undergo the trouble of and that at which Russia is still struggling taking what there would be no use in keepwith barbarous elements, yet they are both ing. And there would be no permanent new countries, with their real history still to use to America in having a corner in the come. Each has a serf question on its bands, East of Europe, supposing that she could still urgent, and each is the conscious pos- get it. She would find herself in the cen sessor of vast undeveloped resources. Hence tre of a great movement and whirl which is the cordiality existing between these two only the continuation of the movement, and apparently so diverse Powers, which puzzles whirl of centuries, and to which, as a new people in this country and in France. But and Transatlantic Power, she could have no how could the Americans be expected to key. She would be surrounded by Powers understand the policy of a country like Aus- speaking an unknown tongue, living among tria? Obviously, the foreign policy of such unfamiliar ideas, and pursuing unintelligia country conforms to the ideas and exi ble aims-unintelligible, that is, on any gencies which belong to its internal situa- principles that are acknowledged in the tion; and the exigencies of Austria, with United States. The theory of the Russian its complex nationalities, its bad past, its journalists who invite America to help heralternations of reaction and revolution, and self to a portion of the decrepit Turk's its almost hopeless domestic confusion, can- dominions must be that she will come into not in any way engage the intelligent at- Europe very much as England went into tention of such a people as the Republicans India. She will take part in our affairs, as of the West. American history furnishes we did in those of the native sovereigns, no principles to serve as guides for any ac- just as a pretext for extending her own tive relations, whether friendly or hostile, power. Little by little she will creep_on, with Austrian politics. An American di- until in due time she will divide with Holy plomatist trying to connect the ideas of his own Russia the Protectorate of Europe. Such country in some way with the action of Aus- a theory of the future is not worth discusstria in Europe would be like a man attempt- ing. By the time it has been realized we ing to find a common measure between two, may fairly suppose that some method will incommensurable quantities. They might have been devised for promoting emigration perhaps meet on some bit of negative to some of the other planets, and that thus ground - hostility to England, for exam- our descendants will have a chance of avoidple; but this would be the simple diplomatic ing both Americans and Russians. phrase which both could understand, and it would be much too narrow to support anything like an alliance. Alliances to last more than twelve months, in the present condition of international politics, must be based on a positive principle. A mere common antipathy does not suffice.

An alliance between England and America in European affairs has often been spoken of as the best solution of the question as to the position which we ought to assume in the face of the Continental Powers. Rather more than twelve months ago, when the French ironclads anchored at Spithead, and For similar reasons, we may ask what there was much talk in consequence of the sort of relations could obtain between the entente cordiale with the Empire, a certain United States and France in European af- section of Liberals deplored that we were fairs? Here, indeed, there are old tradi- not entertaining instead a fleet of American tions of alliance and friendship which might Monitors. Here, it was said, we should find serve as some sort of guide. But those tra- our true allies, kinsmen in blood, people ditions would soon be found not to apply to speaking the same language, and making a case in which America would not be the the freedom of the individual the prime end sufferer from European influences, but of government with the same resolution and would herself be the intruder into purely ardour. But these considerations, though European concerns. The principles which so far sound that there really is room for a dictated the ancient accord between France warm general friendship between the Amerand the United States would have no bear-icans and the English, do not in any way

really no just grounds for such a feeling, but it gathered strength from the fact that the deceased Prince had made a will shortly before his death, in which the bulk of his vast possessions was bequeathed to the King's fourth son, the Duc d'Aumale. The young Prince, thus enriched, must have been looked upon as an extraordinary favourite of fortune when, soon after reaching man's estate, he received a magnificent dowry with the hand of his cousin, the daugh

hit the mark. They perhaps show a reason | Bourbon-Condé, died at his palace of Comwhy, if America were a European Power, piègne, under circumstances which excited she would most likely fight on the same side, much suspicion at the time. There were in the field or in diplomacy, as that on which we should fight. But, even if America kad not shown herself altogether unwilling to recognise the force of these amicable considerations, they leave untouched all the objections that exist against the intrusion of America into European affairs at all. If there is any virtue in the MONROE doctrine that America should belong to the Americans, it applies with equal force to our own Continent as well. Any American solution of a European difficulty might be interest-ter of the Prince of Salerno. To them, ing, but the Transatlantic atmosphere is so within a year, was born a son, on whom his peculiar that, for practical purposes, such Royal grandfather bestowed his own Chrisa solution would not be much more valuable tian name and the title of Prince of Condé. than a theory from some American college It was this child, Louis-Philippe-Marie-Leoof the true policy of the Athenian Com- pold d'Orleans, the heir of such hopes and monwealth or the Roman Republic. If we of such apparently promising destinies, who are justly requested to leave the Americans died a few months ago, before he had reachalone, because our current ideas on politics ed his twenty-first year, on the distant lose their force and vitality when transferred shores of the Southern Pacific, and whose to their affairs, it is not less just to suppose that American ideas about the affairs of Europe would prove equally faulty and inefficient. We are not saying that there are no American ideas in politics which might be advantageously modified for our own internal use, or for the use of the French or the Germans. But international relations hang together in a way which makes the application of this or that detached principle impossible or futile. The Statesystem of Europe is a more or less compact structure. It abounds in loose bits, but the intrusion of a new, big, and essentially angular and unyielding Power like the United States would only increase the confusion, and make it a thousand times more dangerous. Fortunately, the Americans shrewd enough to see this, as well as to perceive that such an intrusion could scarcely under any circumstances, produce any good to themselves. More probably still, they never thought about the matter at all until it was suggested to them by their Russian friends and the telegraph agents.

remains were corsigned last Saturday to the temporary resting-place at Weybridge, where the ashes of his exiled kindred already reposed.

The youth thus prematurely snatched away was a prince of great promise, clever, lively, high-spirited, well instructed, formed, by the training of his father (the ablest of a not ungifted family), either to adorn the private station which fate would seem to have prepared for him, or to fulfil greater and higher destinies, if time and fortune should call him to them. Young as he was, the opportunity had been offered him of wearing a crown, which, with a wisdom beyond his years, but not, perhaps, beyond his experience, he decided to refuse. When it was found that our Prince Alfred would not be permitted to accept the crown of Greece, the " wire-pullers" of the popular movement in that country made overtures to the Duc d'Aumale, proposing to give the crown to the young Prince of Condé, and assuring him that, if he were willing to accept it, the vote of the Greek people would speedily make him king. The father perhaps, with all his talents for organization and administration rusting unused, and with so large a field opened for their active exercise, might have been disposed to consider the offer a From the London Review. tempting one, but he did not try to influence

THE LAST CONDE.

are

EARLY in the reign of the "Citizen King," the last Prince of the historic line of

his son's choice, and left it entirely to be guided by his own judgment and reflection. The young Prince's decision was soon taken, and it was conveyed to those from whom the offer had come in language which show